Characterization of tumor-directed cellular immune responses in humans

Understanding tumor/host immune interactions may help to fight cancer. Growing knowledge about T cell responses and increasing success of immunotherapeutic approaches have created the need for methods to characterize tumor-directed cellular immune responses. The spectrum of methods reaches from protein-based methods, including tetramers or intracellular flow cytometry, to genetic assays, such as TCR analysis or microarray techniques, further on to functional assays analysing proliferation and microtoxicity. Here, we describe these and further methods and explain their respective application in human tumor immunology