Gene, Vaccine and Immunotherapies against Cancer: New Approaches to an old Problem

The search for new cancer therapies is one of the most pressing tasks of biomedical science. Due to cancer's complexity and heterogeneity, we obviously cannot expect to find one therapeutic solution for all the cases and its forms. The tremendous increase in our knowledge of the molecular biology of carcinogenesis (the mechanisms of cancer formation) has led to the development of new therapeutic approaches during the past 10-20 years. The most important can be classified as gene therapy, vaccine therapy (or "active" immunotherapy) and antibody therapy (or "passive" immunotherapy).