Duane Mitchell Evening Lecture

The concept of using a patient’s own immune system to eradicate invasive cancers has been under investigation for many decades, but recent breakthroughs in the field of cancer immunotherapy have revolutionized the landscape of treatments for many aggressive cancers such as metastatic melanoma, lung cancer, and kidney cancer. Advances in our understanding of how cancers evade immune detection and new methods for actively engaging the killing power and specificity of the immune system in the elimination of tumor cells have opened the door to several new treatment approaches. This talk will review the major approaches being deployed in cancer immunotherapy treatments and the relevance in the treatment of malignant brain tumors.