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Decade in review—cancer immunotherapy

Entering the mainstream of cancer treatment

Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology volume 11, pages 630–632 (2014)Cite this article

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By November 2004, when the first issue of Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology was published, cancer immunotherapy had been successfully applied to the treatment of selected human cancers; however, dramatic progress in the following decade has moved immunotherapy from the sidelines of cancer treatment into the mainstream of modern oncology.

Administration of IL-2, the first immunotherapy capable of mediating complete, durable cancer responses was originally described in 1985 and approved by the FDA for the treatment of patients with renal cancer and melanoma in 1992 and 1998, respectively. In 2003, the first evidence that the administration of an antibody targeting the inhibitory T-cell costimulatory molecule CTLA-4, (often referred to as a checkpoint modulator) could mediate cancer regression in patients with metastatic melanoma was published. Despite extensive efforts to develop therapeutic cancer vaccines, prior to 2004 none had been shown to be effective.

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Figure 1: Adoptive cell transfer immunotherapy.

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  1. National Cancer Institute, 10 Center Drive MSC 1201, Bethesda, 20892, MD, USA

    Steven A. Rosenberg

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  1. Steven A. Rosenberg
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Correspondence to Steven A. Rosenberg.

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The author declares no competing financial interests.

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Rosenberg, S. Entering the mainstream of cancer treatment. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 11, 630–632 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2014.174

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