The present status of immunodiagnosis and immunotherapy of cancer.

A number of immunodiagnostic procedures in cancer is clinically important in the sense that the tests may confirm the results of other cancer diagnostic investigations. However, each one of the tests has its own area of application. Immunodiagnostic tests are used for the detection of relapse or metastases as well as for the histological verification of the tumor. A mass screening for tumors in the population and most probably the early tumor diagnosis by immunological means is impossible due to biological variables among the tumor bearers and to technical difficulties. Immunotherapy of tumors is still at an experimental stage. Although immunization is possible to animal tumors convincing data on similar effects in the human tumor system do not exist as yet. This conclusion is based on immunization experiments with adjuvants as well as with tumor preparations, transfer factor, thymosin, or immune RNA. The fact that tumor cytotoxic and tumor cytostatic immunological mechanisms do occur even in the human tumor system is a stimulus for future approaches.