Can personalized tumor vaccines improve interleukin-2 treated metastatic melanoma?

A combination of IL2 therapy and activation of patients' immune systems using personalized vaccines made from their own tumor cells has been shown to improve survival rates even more than IL2 alone according to a new study. "This is an important addition to the literature on IL2 treatment for metastatic melanoma demonstrating that personalized vaccine therapy contributed to an increased survival rate," says Co-Editor-in-Chief Donald J. Buchsbaum, PhD, Division of Radiation Biology, Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham.