ABSTRACT
Imatinib has become standard therapy for all phases of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). CML offers a unique opportunity to test the efficacy and feasibility of immunotherapeutic strategies, as currently most patients achieve very pronounced responses furnishing an ideal situation for immunotherapy in a disease known to be responsive in principle to immune attack. Immunotherapy approaches currently under evaluation include active specific immunotherapies (vaccines) and nonspecific immunotherapies. Several CML antigens have been identified as potential targets for an anti-CML vaccine strategy, and different approaches at different stages of development are now under evaluation for CML patients. Active-specific immunotherapy with potential antitumor effect in CML relies on the use of intracellular proteins other than p210. In fact a number of self proteins are aberrantly overexpressed in CML and other tumor cells while being expressed at low levels in normal lineages and thus may function as targets for directed immunotherapy of residual disease.
