Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the industrialized world. Most cancer patients are treated by a combination of surgery, radiation and/or chemotherapy. Whereas the primary tumor can, in most cases, be efficiently treated by a combination of these standard therapies, preventing the metastatic spread of the disease through disseminated tumor cells is often not effective. The eradication of disseminated tumor cells present in the blood circulation and micro-metastases in distant organs therefore represents another promising approach in cancer immunotherapy. Main strategies of cancer immunotherapy aim at exploiting the therapeutic potential of tumor-specific antibodies and cellular immune effector mechanisms. Whereas passive antibody therapy relies on the repeated application of large quantities of tumor antigen-specific antibodies, active immunotherapy aims at the generation of a tumor-specific immune response combining both humoral and cytotoxic T cell effector mechanisms by the host's immune system following vaccination. In the first part of this review, concurrent developments in active and passive cancer immunotherapy are discussed. In the second part, the various approaches for the production of optimized monoclonal antibodies used for anti-cancer vaccination are summarized.
Serum parameters as indicators for the efficacy of therapeutic drugs are currently in the focus of intensive research. The induction of certain cytokines (or cytokine patterns) is known to be related to the status of the immune response e.g. in regulating the TH1/TH2 balance. Regarding their potential value as surrogate parameters in clinical trials and subsequently for the assignment of treatment efficacy, the accurate and reliable determination of cytokines in patient serum is mandatory. Because serum samples are precious and limited, test methods—like the xMAP multiplex technology—that allow for the simultaneous determination of a variety of cytokines from only a small sample aliquot, can offer great advantages.We here have compared multiplex kits from three different manufactures and found striking differences upon standardizing using WHO standards for selected cytokines. We therefore extended our xMAP multiplex measurements investigations to an ex-vivo situation by testing serum samples and found that the cytokine amounts measured was critically influenced by the actual kit used. The presented data indicate that statements regarding the quantitive determination of cytokines—and therefore their use as biomarkers—in serum samples have to be interpreted with caution.
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