[A new look at the history of tumor immunotherapy--for its fruitful future through overcoming the widespread cynicism].

This review deals with a new look at the history of tumor immunotherapy by dividing that into four generations in the context of its recent scientific advance which gives a birth of a new paradigm to immunology and immunotherapy of human cancer. Tumor immunology was born in 1953 when the presence of tumor specific transplantation antigens was demonstrated in the animal models. All trials were nonsense in the 0 generation before its birth except for Coley's vaccine. The 1st generation (1953-1983) of immunotherapy after its birth was the period in which the nonspecific immunotherapy was enthusiastically attempted too much without knowledge of specific tumor immunity, only to result in the cynicism of tumor immunology and immunotherapy. After this, new important discoveries in tumor immunology have been followed successively in animal models, giving a scientific basis to immunotherapy of human cancer. The key discoveries in human tumor immunology, however, have been done since 1986 when first adoptive immunotherapy with autologous CTL from patient's tumor was attempted. Thus, immunotherapy from 1983 to 1986 and that from 1986 to present are separately reviewed in this paper as the 2nd generation and the 3rd generation, respectively.