Breast Cancer Immunotherapy

Breast cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women worldwide.Although tumorectomy,radiotherapy,chemotherapy and hormone replacement therapy have been used for the treatment of breastcancer,there is no effective therapy for patients with invasive and metastatic breast cancer.Immunotherapymay be proved effective in treating patients with advanced breast cancer.Breast cancer immunotherapyincludes antibody based immunotherapy,cancer vaccine immunotherapy,adoptive T cell transferimmunotherapy and T cell receptor gene transfer immunotherapy.Antibody based immunotherapy such as themonoclonal antibody against HER-2/neu (trastuzumab) is successfully used in the treatment of breast cancerpatients with over-expressed HER-2/neu,however,HER-2/neu is over-expressed only in 25-30% of breastcancer patients.Cancer vaccine immunotherapy is a promising method to treat cancer patients.Cancervaccines can be used to induce specific anti-tumor immunity in breast cancer patients,but cannot induceobjective tumor regression.Adoptive T cell transfer immunotherapy is an effective method in the treatment ofmelanoma patients.Recent advances in anti-tumor T cell generation ex vivo and limited clinical trial data havemade the feasibility of adoptive T cell transfer immunotherapy in the treatment of breast cancer patients.T cellreceptor gene transfer can redirect the specificity of T cells.Chimeric receptor,scFv(anti-HER-2/neu)/zetareceptor,was successfully used to redirect cytotoxic T lymphocyte hybridoma cells to obtain anti-HER-2/neupositive tumor cells,suggesting the feasibility of treatment of breast cancer patients with T cell receptor genetransfer immunotherapy.Clinical trials will approve that immunotherapy is an effective method to cure breastcancer disease in the near future.Cellular & Molecular Immunology.2004;1(4):247-255.