Immunotherapy in the Treatment of a Brain Tumor

Treatment options for brain tumors include surgical resection, cranial irradiation and systemic or local chemotherapy. These treatments all have serious adverse side effects and provide relatively minimal survival benefits for most brain tumors. Antigenic differences between normal and malignant cells of the cancer patient form the rationale for clinical immunotherapeutic strategies. Cytokines such as IL-15 or IL-2 that stimulate an antitumor immune response have been shown to have high potential for use in immunotherapy against various tumors. In this review, studies with either a poxvirus genetically engineered to secrete IL-15, or allogeneic fibroblasts engineered to secrete IL-2 are shown to be an effective treatment strategy in prolonging survival in mice with malignant intracerebral tumors upon injection of the treatment cells into the brain. Future studies with these treatment strategies in patients with intracerebral tumors are urgently needed.