Monitoring antitumour immune response during immunotherapy of cancer - Whyand how?

Cancer remains one of the most important public health concerns facing us t oday. Despite recent therapeutic developments, conventional therapies have provided only limited success in the management of patients with advanced d isease. The recent discovery of tumour-associated antigens has led to a str ong interest in immunotherapy as an alternative or adjuvant cancer treatmen t modality. Despite the expanding volumes of literature on this form of the rapy confirming its strong anti-neoplastic effects in animals, much still r emains to be elucidated with respect to its clinical applicability and effe ctiveness in human subjects. Clinical trials evaluating a wide variety of i mmunotherapeutic approaches in cancer patients are currently underway throu ghout the world and many have yielded promising preliminary results. In ord er to reach a better understanding of this potentially powerful therapeutic tool in a timely fashion, a methodical, multi-institutional approach is in dispensable. All patients undergoing treatment should be monitored closely in order to correlate specific therapy-induced anti-tumour responses with c linical outcomes. This article provides a brief overview of specific assays currently used to monitor immune responses in these patients. Special emph asis is placed on the theory behind these tests and specific examples from the literature are provided.