Interaction of current cancer treatments and the immune system: implications for breast cancer therapeutics

Abstract

Early diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer may account for the current improvement in the mortality of breast cancer. However, achieving a complete ‘cure’ is the holy grail of cancer medicine and, in many cases, cancer patients still succumb to their ultimate fate. There is therefore a need to devise innovative therapies to overcome this problem. To this end, many emerging therapies utilizing the immune system to eradicate the residues of disease have been described in the preclinical and clinical arenas. However, there is very little work examining the impact of immunotherapy on the existing natural immunity. The relationship between antitumor immunity, in the form of immunotherapy (either passive or active), and current strategies of treatment also needs to be explored. If we are to improve the success of cancer treatment, we must understand how current therapies interact with the immune system and with the emerging immunotherapies. For breast-cancer treatment to be successful, therapeutics should be tailored towards antitumor immunity; they should also avoid tumor-specific tolerance. The sources of information used to prepare this paper were obtained through published work on Pubmed/Medline and materials published on the US/UK governmental agencies' websites.

Keywords::

• breast cancer
• immune system
• immunotherapy

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Andrew George (Imperial College London, UK), Katie Urch (St Mary's & Royal Brompton Hospitals, London, UK) and Cliburn Chan (Duke University, USA) for critical review of the manuscript. Because of space restrictions, the authors were able to cite only a fraction of the relevant literature. We apologize to any colleagues whose contributions might not be appropriately acknowledged in this review.

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