Cancer immunotherapy consists of a number of approaches that aim to utilize the power of the immune system to combat the cancer by producing activated tumour-specific cytoxic T-cells (CTL) that are able to eradicate the antigen-bearing tumor cells. Cancer immunotherapies can be divided in (i) active immunotherapies aiming to mount an immune response to one or more tumour-associated antigens (i.e. cancer vaccines), (ii) passive immunotherapies relying on the administration of exogenously produced tumor antigen-specific lymphocytes or antibodies and (iii) immunomodulatory approaches that try to amplify the anticancer immune response by blocking the down-regulation of the adaptive immune system (i.e. checkpoint inhibitors). This brief overview will focus on those cancer immunotherapies for which survival data in lung cancer are available from large randomized controlled trials.
