Corel Medical Series: Cancer/Corel Medical Series: Cancer.iso/mac/Program/c25.dxr/00055_Field_SRC.c25.C.19.txt

Text File | 1997-01-28 | 2KB | 17 lines

• There are an increasing number of interleukins , several of which are now being tested on humans. Other
  combinations include interferons and interleukins together or in sequence.
• High-dose chemotherapy , with single drugs or in combinations, followed by autologous bone marrow
  transplantation, has had too many dangerous side effects associated with the drugs in current trials and too
  short a duration of response. The general approach, however, is very promising. Even now the rate of
  response is in the order of 60 percent.
• Several groups, including one at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD, have begun investigating
  immunotherapy with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) or cloned killer and helper T cells . This form of
  "adoptive" immunotherapy involves removing blood cells from the patient, stimulating and multiplying them,
  then returning them, usually with IL-2 . Insertion of genes for cytokines, such as IL-2, TNF or GM-CSF, into
  irradiated tumor cells (for vaccines) or T cells (for adoptive immunotherapy) is being tried to make vaccines
  more effective or to increase the number and life-span of the transferred T cells in the body. This "gene
  therapy," particularly as applied to tumor vaccines, may be a way of boosting the immune system beyond
  what the weak tumor antigens can do by themselves. Whether it is better than current methods of boosting
  immunity with less glamorous approaches, such as by mixing vaccines with bacterial substances, remains to be
  seen.