High-dose IL-2 for metastatic renal cell carcinoma: can the first antitumor immunotherapy be reinvented?

Immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer holds the unique promise of durable, systemic antitumor responses capable of targeting malignant disease throughout the body. Just 8 years after the discovery of IL-2 [1], this promise was first fulfilled in a small clinical trial utilizing systemic high-dose IL-2 (HD IL-2) demonstrating a complete response in a metastatic melanoma patient who was cured of all malignant disease and has remained disease free for more than 29 years [2,3]. In this same trial, three out of three metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) patients showed partial regression of disease. The most encouraging benefit of HD IL-2 therapy then and now is the potential for complete elimination of malignant disease in a small subset of patients (˜5–10%) [3–5].

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