Role of Immune Response in the Prognosis of Carcinoma of the Uterine Cervix: Can in Vitro Analysis Provide a better Framework for more Effective Management?

Abstract

Cancer of the uterine cervix is the single largest female malignancy in India and also remains a major problem facing oncologists in other parts of the world. While advances in radiation therapy and surgical techniques have made the treatment of cervical carcinoma impressive, limitations to successful management still remain. In fact, the 5-year survival rate, stage for stage, has not improved in the United States or world wide in the past 40 years. With an estimated half a million women developing this disease annually, this lack of improved survival poses an international unresolved health problem. Immune response has been shown to be a major factor involved in the course of the disease for this cancer. Immunologic monitoring was also shown to be of effective value in assessing the prognosis for cervical carcinoma. We studied the various immunologic abnormalities in cervical cancer, the effects of radiation therapy on immune function, prospects of an immunologic staging system, the relationship between human papillomavirus infection and the immune response, and the possibility of using in vitro immunologic assessment to provide a better framework for more effective management of cancer of the uterine cervix.

Augmentation of T-cell immune responses and signal transduction proteins in oral cancer patients: potential for IL-2-mediated immunotherapy

“…Preliminary studies reported by us and others in oral cancer reveal gross immunological alterations in terms of increased circulating immune complexes , imbalance of lymphocyte populations (Balaram et al 1983;Pillai et al 1987), lymphocyte functions (Cheriyan et al 2009;Balaram et al 1984), serum blocking effects (Balaram et al 1984;Pillai et al 1988) and kinetics of target cell lysis (Pillai et al 1990a). We have also shown in cancer of the uterine cervix that irrespective of the stage of the disease, the patients could be classified into those with adequate immune responses and depressed immune responses, both groups falling in the same stage of the disease.…”