Studies of treatment with IL-2 show a response rate of 20 to 25 percent in patients with kidney cancer. IL-2—with or without the addition of LAK or TIL cells also produces a response rate of about 20 to 25 percent in cases of advanced malignant melanoma. These responses are usually partial; complete responses are rare.
Colony-Stimulating Factors (CSFs) The CSFs are not directly effective against tumors, but they do play a major role in increasing the number and the activity of neutrophils and/or macrophages .
What makes research with CSFs particularly exciting is that high-dose chemotherapy dramatically reduces the number of white blood cells (including neutrophils) that fight infection, making chemotherapy patients vulnerable to various infectious diseases. It is for this reason that the dosage of chemotherapy often has to be kept low, thwarting any attempts to give higher and potentially more effective doses. Today the number of neutrophils can be increased by using colony-stimulating factors (such as G-CSF and GM-CSF), so both the severity and the duration of low white blood counts can be reduced. Infections are therefore less common and less severe. The CSFs allow greater doses of chemotherapy to be given, which in turn may lead to more complete remissions.
T Cells Some investigators are studying the use of T cells rather than less specific cells in the fight against cancer. The T lymphocyte is a very important component of the immune response. It recognizes tumor cells
