From its humble beginning in the 19th century, immunotherapy for cancer has
emerged as a prospective curative approach in the last decade. Currently, different
immunotherapies are being used in the clinic including monoclonal antibodies (MAbs),
adoptively transferred T cells and cancer vaccines. Of these immunotherapies, MAbs
are the most widely used, however their efficacy is restricted by their limited
biodistribution, and reliance on antibody-dependent cell cytotoxicity and/or
complement-mediated cell death, which can be impaired in cancer patients. In contrast,
adoptively transferred T cells have the capacity to effectively traffic to tumor sites,
recruit multiple cellular and humoral effector mechanisms, and persist for many years.
In this chapter, we review T cell based immunotherapy for cancer, describe its current
clinical impact, and discuss approaches that aim to combine T cells with other cancertargeted
therapies.
Keywords: Cancer, chimeric antigen receptor, clinical trial, Epstein-Barr virus,
gene therapy, T cell immunotherapy, T cell receptor, tumor antigen.
