Strategies for cytokine utilisation in tumor therapy

The state of the art with regard to the employment of various cytokine-based tumor immunotherapy strategies and their mechanisms of action are critically reviewed. As matters now stand, adoptive transfer of LAK cells or tumor infiltrating lymphocytes together with high doses of IL-2 constitutes the only immunologic way to hinder tumor growth in advanced stages of cancer. On the other hand, many experimental data show that the local presence of cytokines, either injected repeatedly at tumor site or released by cytokine-gene engineered tumor cells, arouses immunogenicity in apparently nonimmunogenic spontaneous tumors. By strengthening the notion that most tumors are potentially immunogenic, these findings offer substantial evidence to stress the potential use of cytokines as a component of new tumor vaccines.