Immunologic aspects of gynecologic cancer.

All vertebrates have a defense mechanism, the immune defense system, that protects them from disease-causing microorganisms. Its deliberate exploitation has conquered many infectious diseases and has been a major achievement of medical science in preventing suffering and saving lives. At the beginning of this century, hope was held that dissimilarities between normal and neoplastic cells could be demonstrated by immunologic methods and that vaccination against cancer might become possible. When it was recognized that the many claims of tumor=specific antigenicity were based on experiments in which an immunity to normal alloantigens, rather than tumor-specific antigens, had been demonstrated, the field of tumor immunology came into disrepute. The work of Gross in 1943 and Prehn and Main in 1957 rekindled interest in tumor immunology. Many contributions have advanced the concept of tumor immunology. They are the following: (1) an abundant supply of highly inbred (syngeneic) animals; (2) extensive work on experimental transplantable tumors; (3) an understanding of the mechanism causing rejection of grafted normal and cancerous tissues in animals; (4) identification of the function of the humoral and cell-mediated mechanisms following organ transplantation; (5) the observation that cancers do arouse a specific immune response in the organisms in which they appear; (6) antigenic differences represent the first known qualitative distinction between cancer cells and their normal counterparts; (7) the application of improved technology--columns, use of fluorescein-tagged antibodies, urea as a chaotropic agent, nephelometer; (8) hybridoma to produce a supply of monoclonal antibodies; (9) new vaccines directed against invasive tumors, and (10) the exploration of the role of immune complexes in oncology. The areas of promise and the future of cancer immunology have once again challenged the minds of scientists.