Immunome Research
Open Access

Abstract

Antitumor Immunity.

Stacy M*

In 1950 Dr. J Englebert Dunphy, then a young attending surgeon at the Department of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, published a working hypothesistitled “Some observations on the natural behavior of cancer in man” in the New England Journal of Medicine . In that essay Dr. Dunphy described four cancer cases the outcomes of which seemed unpredictable at the time. Although could not explain what had influenced each of those cases to be what they were, he intended to use them to make an argument that cancer is not always what we think it is: a steadily and irrevocably progressing disease, but has some period of growth rest or even regression amid progress. These rest and regression seem to be caused by the host, not part of the tumor’s own biology. He used the term “local tissue resistance” for that host influence. Today, we call it antitumor immunity and we know a lot more of it than 70 years ago. Yet this revisiting essay is not about how much more we know this “ local tissue resistance ”

Published Date: 2021-04-29; Received Date: 2021-03-29