Preventing abnormalities in signal transduction of T cells in cancer: the promise of cytokine gene therapy

Recent evidence suggests that T cells from tumor-bearing patients exhibit abnormalities in signal transduction that render them unresponsive to appropriate activation signals. Here, Karen Zier, Bernd Gansbacher and Silvia Salvadori review evidence that gene therapy with interleukin 2 (IL-2)-secreting tumor-cell vaccines may prevent such signaling defects.