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At the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington DC this week, Wolchok and other researchers will report on their search for immunotherapy markers - ways to predict a patient's response to an immunotherapy or to show whether a given treatment is working. The work is hampered by the complexity of the immune system, but early results are converging on one point: that patients' own immune responses to cancer are crucial in determining outcomes.

Artificially boosting the body's immune response against cancer is the most exciting advance in the treatment of tumors in the past couple of years. But as the jam-packed sessions at a recent scientific conference in New York City made clear, a lot of questions remain to be answered before anyone can declare victory in the war on cancer. Among them: What is the best way to kick the immune system into action? Will immunotherapy work for all sorts of people with all kinds of cancer or just for a lucky few? Is there a way to make the treatments less dangerous or expensive?

New immune system-boosting cancer drugs have in clinical trials saved the lives of many people with seemingly untreatable melanoma or lung cancer, but the drugs seem useless against colon cancer. One exception-a man with colon cancer whose metastatic tumors vanished for several years after he was treated in 2007-piqued researchers' interest. They suspected his recovery might have to do with the large number of mutations in his tumors. Now, a small clinical trial suggests that even cancer patients with types of tumors that were thought to be impervious to the new drugs could benefit if those malignancies have the right error-riddled DNA signature, a result that could help 3% to 4% of cancer patients.

The rise of immunotherapy has been one of the most startling and promising developments in cancer research for some time. After decades of false starts and dead ends, scientists have finally found effective ways of marshaling the immune system to destroy cancers.

WEDNESDAY, April 22, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- In a step toward personalized vaccines against cancer, scientists report they have developed an immune-system therapy that knocks out several types of aggressive tumors in mice. German researchers said the findings, reported April 22 in the journal Nature, could lead to a "blueprint" for developing tailored vaccines for a range of cancers. Such vaccines would be designed for individual patients, based on the specific genetic mutations in their tumors.

At Fred Hutch, we support engaging, challenging and relevant classroom learning experiences for all students by providing access to high-quality instructional materials developed by teachers and scientists. Our free, open-source lessons and units are geared towards high school biotech and biology teachers and focus on giving students opportunities to explore biotechnology and the social dimensions of research science.