Immunostimulation in cancer patients

Abstract

It is interesting to treat cancer patients by the potentiation of their depressed immune status. There are many immunopotentiators which showed potent antitumor activity in experimental tumor systems in vivo and in vitro, however, which were not always effective in well-designed controlled clinical trials. At the present time, we should say that cancer immunotherapy is not the first modality for cancer treatment and we should be careful not to miss more effective modalities for the treatment of cancer patients by the overestimation of cancer immunotherapy. Further extensive studies will be required to establish new modalities such as the development of more effective immunostimulation which is cytotoxic to tumor cells and the exploration of combined immunostimulation by using more than two immunotherapies, or immunotherapy combined with other cancer therapeutic modalities.