Enhancing Cancer Immunotherapy Via Activation of Innate Immunity

Given recent technological advances and advances in our understanding of cancer, immunotherapy of cancer is being used with clear clinical benefit. The immunosuppression accompanying cancer itself, as well as with current cancer treatment with radiation or chemotherapy, impairs adaptive immune effectors to a greater extent than innate effector cells. In addition to being less suppressed, innate immune cells are capable of being enhanced via immune-stimulatory regimens. Most strategies being investigated to promote innate immune responses against cancer do not require complex, patient-specific, ex vivo cellular or molecular creation of therapeutic agents; thus they can, generally, be used as "off the shelf" therapeutics that could be administered by most cancer clinics. Successful applications of innate immunotherapy in the clinic have effectively targeted components of the innate immune response. Preclinical data demonstrate how initiation of innate immune responses can lead to subsequent adaptive long-term cancer immunity. We hypothesize that integration of innate immune activation strategies into combination therapies for cancer treatment will lead to more effective and long-term clinical benefit.