Cancer Immune Therapy Edited by G. Stuhler and P. Walden ...

apy. Since such therapies are well tolerated by the patients, this appears to be an attractive
option; however, it requires that tumor material for vaccine production is
available for long periods.
While the clinical responses observed in the initial trials are promising, cure is a
rare exception and the question is how to improve the vaccination therapies in order
to improve the response rates and, in future, offer vaccination therapy as a standard
therapy for the treatment of various cancer. Late-stage cancers are certainly not targets
for cancer immune therapy. The tumor burden is often very high, the patients
often already suffer from disease-related immune suppression and the tumor cells
might already be highly diversified. The selection of an immune-escape variant of
the tumor is a possible adverse effect of specific immune intervention. It is conceivable
to combine HCV with other treatment modalities that can help to reduce the tumor
burden and to provide relief from some of the immune-suppressive activities of
the tumors. It might be necessary to include in the treatment cytokines that can stabilize
the tumor-specific T cell responses, and aid their long-term expansion and
functional integrity.
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