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Immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy in the treatment of tumors

James L Frazier1, James E Han, Michael Lim

  • 1Department of Neurosurgery, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 North Wolfe Street, Phipps 100, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA.

Neurosurgery Clinics of North America
|December 1, 2009
PubMed

This article provides a broad overview of the data, including laboratory and clinical studies, currently available on the combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy for treating cancer. The various forms of immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy include monoclonal antibodies, adoptive lymphocyte transfer, or active specific immunotherapy, such as tumor proteins, irradiated tumor cells, tumor cell lysates, dendritic cells pulsed with peptides or lysates, or tumor antigens expressed in plasmids or viral vectors. This discussion is not limited to malignant brain tumors, because many of the studies have been conducted on various cancer types, thereby providing a comprehensive perspective that may encourage further studies that combine chemotherapy and immunotherapy for treating brain tumors.

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