Current issues in tumor immunology

The goal of tumor immunology is to understand the interactions between tumor cells and immune system, and ultimately to devise immune basedapproaches to fight cancer. We discuss here recent advances in tumor immunology and in the interaction between immunology and informatics that provide new perspectives for the development of cancer therapy. Cancer immunoprevention is a novel approach to cancer prevention through the use of vaccines and other immunological strategies to be applied before tumor onset. The efficacy of cancer immunoprevention has been demonstrated in several experimental systems, however, as frequently happens in novel approaches, cancer immunoprevention studies incorporate a large number of variables. We show here how a specifically designed lattice gas model can provide significant insight for the analysis of immune variables and the design of new biological experiments. A second approach that provides new perspectives in tumor immunology as the result of interactions between immunology and informatics is the use of DNA microarrays to investigate and monitor tumor-host relationships and modifications induced by immunopreventive and immunotherapeutic interventions.