ABSTRACT
Immunity is the ability of an organism to repel disease by recognizing and neutralizing foreign substances and pathogens. Generally, one can basically differentiate lymphoid and myeloid immune cells and both have certain major modes of activation. Three main types of lymphocytes have been distinguished: natural killer (NK) cells, B lymphocytes, and T lymphocytes. NK cells belong to the innate immune cells and one of their major functions is killing abnormal or cancer cells that are missing MHC I markers and that cannot be recognized as abnormal by other cell types. Immune cells produce a huge spectrum of compounds named cytokines acting on other cell types and tissues, which constitutes a major part of humoral immunity. The chapter shows selected current immunotherapies for inflammatory disease and cancer, addressing selected biopharmaceuticals, small molecules, and novel nanomedicines (NM). NMs have adopted several miniaturizations from larger macromolecules. In order to miniaturize glycoproteins, functional sugar carbohydrate groups might be used separately from their protein part.
