Mobilizing the body's defenses against cancer cells.

Our immune system is a powerful weapon against cancer: it recognizes tumor cells as foreign to the body. Nevertheless, some people develop cancer. Here immunotherapies come in. They use the human defense system to fight harmful cells more successfully.

However, some difficulties are to overcome in developing effective cancer immunotherapies: The immune system can not distinguish many cancer cells from healthy body cells, so these cancer cells do not match the immune system's "enemy image." In addition, cancer cells use numerous tricks to evade immune defenses: They change quickly, make themselves invisible, or even inhibit the immune response.

We at the German Cancer Research Center want to make immune cells aware of the tumor with cancer vaccines. As vaccines, we use protein segments or their genetic blueprints that contain cancer-specific mutations.

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