Page 106 - Bio Engineering Approaches to Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment

104 CHAPTER 4 Immunotherapy

FIGURE 4.14 The mechanism of nonspecific immune therapy via specific immune therapy.

4.7.1 Cytokines in nonspecific immunotherapy
Cytokines have known as molecular messengers and cells of innate and adaptive
immunity in response to exterior agents such as microbes or tumor antigens produce
these molecules. These molecules allow the immune system’s cells to communicate
to each other. The secretion of cytokines is different from other immune system
communication. Generally, another communication occurs through direct cell-cell
interaction, while in cytokines it happens by the propagation of multifaceted immune
signaling [101,104]. It has proven that cytokines have broad antitumor activity in
cancer therapy which led to the eradication of cancer cells. And also this signaling is
characterized by a significant amount of pleiotropic, in which one cytokine has the
ability to act on many different cell types to mediate diverse and sometimes opposing
effects. They have an important role to control the growth and activity of immune
system cells. This role depends on several factors, including the local cytokine con-
centration or the pattern of a cytokine receptor. In cancer immunotherapy sometimes