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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