Cancer Immunotherapy — The Endgame Begins

In 1987, an editorial accompanying a report on the use of high-dose interleukin-2 therapy for cancer asked whether the field of immunotherapy was at “the beginning of the end” or “the end of the beginning.”1 In retrospect, I would say it was at the “beginning of the beginning.” Have we made progress since then? Finn, in her review of tumor immunology in this issue of the Journal (pages 2704–2715), answers emphatically in the affirmative, and the report by Hunder et al., also in this issue (pages 2698–2703), underscores the remarkable potential of the immune system to eradicate cancer, even when . . .