Passive, adoptive, and active immunotherapy: a review of clinical trials in cancer.

The results today of passive immunotherapy with monoclonal antibodies (MAb) are still very limited, even via its indirect methods (in vitro tumor cell clearance of bone marrow before autologous retransplantation, transport of cytostatic chemicals, and radiation). Tumor cell heterogeneity requires the use of several MAb. Adoptive immunotherapy in the form of the graft vs leukemia (GVL) reaction associated with the graft vs host (GVH) reaction, after an allogeneic bone marrow transplantation, first demonstrated in animals in 1962, has been confirmed in man. The material and operational development of tumor immunology, immunopharmacology, and clinical trial methodology should improve active immunotherapy results and help to convert into a cure what is often a significant but only marginal increase: 1) of disease-free survival or 2) of survival or 3) of survival after relapse. The general ineffective management and use of adjuvant chemotherapy for all tumors except breast carcinoma before menopause will, on the other hand, contribute to necessary new concepts of how to manage the postremission, residual, minimal disease.