The very rapid accumulation of exciting new information in tumor immunology has created a need for an abbreviated comprehensive review. This short book (85 text pages) admirably fulfills such a need.
There are five chapters. Chapter 1 reviews the relationship of immunodeficiency to cancer. Chapter 2 discusses the biologic characteristics of tumor antigens. The next chapter recounts briefly the evidence demonstrating host immune response. In addition, chapter 3 reviews recent attempts to exploit tumor associated antigens for immunodiagnosis. Chapter 4 discusses tumor immunotherapy models in animals. Only the final chapter actually deals with cancer immunotherapy.
The authors are to be commended for their succinct, well-referenced review of voluminous and often conflicting experimental data. This is particularly evident in the last chapter where approches to human experimental immunotherapy are presented in such an organized fashion that logic and order appear rather than the chaos that more often characterizes reviews of