Recent advances in cancer immunotherapy have directly built on 50 years of fundamental and technological advances that made checkpoint blockade and T cell engineering possible. In this review, we intend to show that research, not specifically designed to bring relief or cure to any particular disease, can, when creatively exploited, lead to spectacular results in the management of cancer. The discovery of thymus immune function, T cells, and immune surveillance bore the seeds for today’s targeted immune interventions and chimeric antigen receptors.
Via Krishan Maggon
Cancer Cell
Volume 27, Issue 4, p439–449, 13 April 2015
The spectacular successes that have been achieved in the immune management of various clinical conditions and especially cancer were borne out of basic research that was creatively exploited by translational researchers. No one could have predicted that investigating how or why virus-induced lymphocytic leukemia needs to develop in the neonatal mouse thymus would reveal the latter’s immunological function. The extensive worldwide research that followed was crucial to our understanding of what cells and molecules regulate T cell activation and how this may be used to our benefit in the clinic.