[Immunotherapy of cancer--status and perspectives]

Already since more than 80 years in medicine a cancer control by means of immunological methods has been tried again and again. In the last decennium above all the possibilities of the immunostimulation and the immunopotentiation as therapeutical principle were investigated. But neither the influence on the macrophages and the NK-cells perhaps by BCG, MDP, interferons or similar things nor the application of a tumour vaccine, e.g. blasts stimulated with neuraminidase, nor the T-lymphocyte stimulation, e.g. by thymus factors or levamisol, nor the activation of the specific tumour defence possibly by interleukins or clonic killer-cells brought a decisive breaking forth. Only in some certain malignant diseases, such as in virus-induced leukaemias or non-Hodgkin lymphomas of the B-cell series, by means of interferon and monoclonal anti-idiotype-antibodies, respectively, principal possibilities of an immunotherapy could be revealed. The question arises, whether the concept of an immunological tumour control underlying the previous therapeutic efforts really proves right or whether or not the recent knowledge about the principle of the oncogenes should give rise to a change of therapeutic thoughts.