How Cancers Escape Immune Destruction and Mechanisms of Action for the New Significantly Active Immune Therapies: Helping Nonimmunologists Decipher Recent Advances

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>With the Food and Drug Administration and other worldwide regulatory authorities’ approval of ipilimumab (Yervoy), sipuleucel-T (Provenge), nivolumab (Opdivo), and pembrolizumab (Keytruda), oncologic therapy has now moved into noncancer cell targets within the immune system. For many nonimmunologists, understanding how these vastly different therapies work to improve survival, like no other therapies have in the past, is a challenge. The present report reviews the normal function of the immune system, how cancers escape the normal immune system, and how these new therapies improve immune system reactions against cancers.</jats:p>