%0 Journal Article
%T Advances and Prospects in Cancer Immunotherapy
%A Juhua Zhou
%J New Journal of Science
%D 2014
%R 10.1155/2014/745808
%X Cancer immunotherapy is a promising and effective treatment modality for patients with cancers. Cytokine, anticytokine, and antibody therapies appear to be effective in treating various forms of cancer. The human papillomavirus vaccine is protective for cervical cancer, and this discovery has paved the way to the development of cancer vaccines for other forms of virus-associated cancers such as liver cancer and Merkel cell carcinoma. Clinical trials have demonstrated that adoptive cell therapy using tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes can induce tumor regression in approximately 75% of metastatic melanoma patients, suggesting the possibility of using similar technique to effectively treat breast, lung, and renal cancers in the near future. Besides, genetically engineered T cells transduced with genes encoding specific T cell receptors and chimeric antigen receptors have been shown effective in the treatment of cancer patients. These studies suggest that combination therapies are superior choices in cancer immunotherapy for patients. 1. Introduction Cancer develops when abnormal cells grow uncontrollably and spread in human body. Different from normal cells, cancer cells have two unique characteristics, that is, uncontrolled growth and metastasis. Recent studies have shown that cancer cells have eight hallmarks, including sustaining proliferative signaling, evading growth suppressors, resisting cell death, enabling replicative immortality, inducing angiogenesis, activating invasion and metastasis, reprogramming of energy metabolism, and evading immune destruction [1]. Usually, gene mutations induced by intrinsic factors and/or exogenous factors result in the production and growth of cancer cells. It has been estimated that new cases of cancer are 1.66 million and deaths from cancer are 0.58 million in the United States in 2013 [2]. It is expected that there will be 20¨C30 million new cases of cancer and 13¨C17 million people will die from caner all over the world by 2030 [3]. At present, cancer is the most serious health problem worldwide [4]. Cancer treatment is still a challenging task to both scientists and clinicians. Currently, cancer is usually treated with surgery [5, 6], radiation [7, 8], chemotherapy [9, 10], hormone therapy [11], biological therapy [12, 13], and targeted therapies [14¨C16]. However, no method available presently for cancer treatment is satisfactory [17]. With the advancement in immunological science and related disciplines, immunotherapy is becoming a new promising method for cancer treatment [18¨C21]. In this paper, the history,
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/njos/2014/745808/