Interleukins, Lymphokines and Lymphoid Neoplasia

Abstract

As this volume clearly indicates, human cancer biology has recently focused to a large extent on the area of metastatic spread of tumor cells throughout the body. The delineation of biological consequences of such invasion to the host is for the first time beginning to be understood on more than a phenomenologic basis. Recent studies with a wide variety of experimental tumor systems, as reported here and in the literature, have begun to elucidate many of the biological mechanisms involved in the pathophysiology of neoplasia and have greatly improved our current understanding of the consequences of the spread of tumor cells. Another related area of emphasis has focused on the host’s immune system and its role in preventing the development of neoplasia through various putative immunosurveillance mechanisms available, or in suppressing the progression of the neoplastic process once the surveillance mechanism(s) are either interdicted or circumvented (1,2). This latter area is generally referred to as tumor immunology, dealing with the contest between the host’s immune system and the incipient or established tumor (usually of epithelial or mesenchymal origin). In this Chapter, we would like to discuss a related but somewhat more insidious condition, wherein the tumor is actually present within the host’s immune system. In such conditions of lymphoreticular neoplasia, one does not usually observe metastasis in the conventional sense.