Manipulating immune cells for adoptive immunotherapy of cancer

• Adoptive immunotherapy can be effective against advanced cancer.
• A variety of leukocytes can be used in adoptive immunotherapy.
• Leukocytes can be genetically modified to enable recognition and destruction of cancer cells.

The immune system can be induced to respond against cancer with some success reported in clinical trials using a range of approaches including vaccines and antibodies. In addition to these approaches, cell based therapies are demonstrating much promise as potential therapies for cancer. In cell therapies autologous patient leukocytes are isolated and manipulated in vitro before transfer back to the patient in adoptive transfer regimens. The majority of approaches utilize conventional T cells or dendritic cells, but a wide variety of other types of leukocytes exist which can possess anti-cancer activity. In this review, we present a brief overview of T cell adoptive cell transfer followed by a review of approaches using alternate lymphocyte subsets and other leukocytes including neutrophils, macrophages and eosinophils.