Evaluation of the Immunological Effects of Cytokines Administered to Patients With Cancer

The goal of cancer immunotherapy is to induce effective immune responses to malignant tumors. Immunostimulatory cytokines can promote antitumor immunity by augmenting immune responses to cancer cells and by reversing anergy and/or tolerance of immune effector cells. The clinical development of cytokines for cancer therapy has been hampered by difficulty in determining the optimal dose and schedule of these molecules. The successful development of cytokine-based therapy requires assays that can measure appropriate surrogate endpoints for the induction of effective antitumor immunity in vivo. Several in vitro assays that have been useful for monitoring the immunological effects of cytokine therapy in humans will be discussed in this chapter. Each technique has advantages and limitations and no single assay has been found to reliably predict antitumor efficacy during clinical immunotherapy.