Immunotherapy in non-renal carcinomas.

Two discoveries have been crucial for the development of modern immunotherapy to human neoplasia. The first is the technology to produce recombinant proteins in large quantities, pioneered in the late 1970s, that has introduced recombinant cytokines as well as chimeric and humanized antibodies into the clinic. The second is the recognition of short peptides derived from intracellular proteins, which are carried to the cell surface on HLA molecules and present to T lymphocytes a sample of the intracellular protein pool for inspection, which provides the foundation for modern tumor vaccines. In this short review, the principles of and the results with cytokine treatment and vaccines in human neoplasms other than renal cancer are summarized.