Clinical immunotherapy for brain tumors

Malignant primary brain tumors now cause more deaths each year than melanoma. Despite advances in surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, recurrence remains essentially 100%. The desire for more effective and more tumor-specific treatment modalities has spawned interest in immunotherapeutic approaches to anticancer therapy. These may be grouped into passive, adoptive, and active strategies. Clinical trials have had varying levels of success, employing each of these strategies and combating such challenges as central nervous system immune privilege and tumor-mediated immunosuppression. This article discusses the rationales and results of these trials, and highlights recent successes with dendritic cell-based immunization platforms. The current understanding of antigen presentation and antitumor responses by the immune system implies that dendritic cell-based immunization platforms may be particularly promising as a mode of active immunotherapy.