Interleukin 2 in cancer therapy.

The goal of adoptive immunotherapy is the stimulation of host antitumor immunity, either cellular or humoral. The introduction of recombinant human cytokines into clinical oncology represents a new useful tool for the development of new strategies of antitumor immunotherapy. This article describes the current clinical status of IL-2 in the therapy of human cancer as it relates to what is already known about the biology and activity of this lymphokine. All the evidences suggest that the antitumor effect of IL-2 seems to be mediated through complex indirect mechanisms involving different effector cells of the immune system.