IL-15's arranged marriage

Although Novartis AG's recombinant IL-2, Proleukin aldesleukin, is one of the few FDA-approved drugs for metastatic melanoma and renal cell carcinoma, use of the drug is limited because of its severe side effects and limited activity. A group at the National Cancer Institute thinks pairing another interleukin, IL-15, with a CD40 agonist could result in better immune stimulation. The key will be making the combination sufficiently specific to avoid unwanted autoimmune side effects.

In a paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) group noted that IL-2 has a couple of key mechanistic drawbacks in cancer. First, the cytotoxic lymphocytes it generates "might recognize the tumor as self and undergo activation-induced cell death."¹...