From tumor immunology to cancer immunotherapy: miles to go

Advances in tumor immunology are supporting the clinical implementation of several immunological approaches to cancer in the clinical setting. However, the alternate success of current immunotherapeutic regimens underscores the fact that the molecular mechanisms underlying immune-mediated tumor rejection are still poorly understood. Given the complexity of the immune system network and the multidimensionality of tumor/host interactions, the comprehension of tumor immunology might greatly benefit from high-throughput microarray analysis, which can portrait the molecular kinetics of immune response on a genome-wide scale, thus accelerating the discovery pace and ultimately catalyzing the development of new hypotheses in cell biology. Although the general principles of microarray-based gene profiling with the application of DNA microarray have rapidly spread in the scientific community, the need for mastering this technique to produce meaningful data and correctly interpret the enormous output of information generated by this technology is critical and represents a tremendous challenge for investigators. To describe the sequence of events conductive to an effective immune recognition and killing of malignant cells, clinicians might use gene profiling as a powerful tool to assess the activation status of the immune system before and during immunotherapy.