Prospects of IL-2 in Cancer Immunotherapy

Table 1

Selected clinical studies with IL-2 treatment at different dose levels.

Treatment type	Disease condition	Treatment	Comments	Ref.
High dose treatment	Melanoma/renal cell cancer	720,000 IU/kg of i.v. IL-2 given eight hourly (up to 15 doses per cycle)	Complete response in 7% and partial regression in 10% of metastatic melanoma patients; Complete regression in 7% and partial regression in 13% patients of renal cell carcinoma	[17]
	Metastatic melanoma/renal cell carcinoma	720,000 IU/kg of i.v. IL-2 given eight hourly (up to 15 doses per cycle)	The proportion of CD4+CD25hi T cells in total CD4 T cells showed 6-fold increase compared to pretreatment level	[18]
	Melanoma	IL-2 as high-dose bolus 8 hourly or gp100 single dose per cycle, along with high-dose IL-2 on the second day	The combination of interleukin-2 and gp100:209–217 (210M) peptide vaccine exhibited relatively higher response rate compared to interleukin-2 alone	[19]
	Renal cell carcinoma	720,000 or 600,000 IU/kg of i.v. IL-2 given 8 hourly to a maximum of 14 doses per cycle; The majority of patients were also given a second cycle of HD IL-2 after an approximate rest of 9 days	HD IL-2 as sole front-line therapy, in the absence of added therapy exhibited extended clinical benefit	[20]
Low dose treatment	Graft versus host disease	Low s.c. dose (300,000; 1,000,000 or 3,000,000 IU/m^2) of IL-2 for eight weeks	Twelve out of the twenty three evaluated patients exhibited good responses at multiple sites.; The sustained clinical and Immunologic responses was observed in patients who received IL-2 for extended period	[21]
	HCV-induced vasculitis	1,500,000 IU/day of for 5 days, followed by 3 × 10^6 IU per day of IL-2 for 5-day given at 3rd, 6th, and 9th week	Eight out of ten patients showed improvement in vasculitis.; Low-dose interleukin-2 administration caused increased percentage of forkhead box P3 (FOXP3+), , CD4+, and Tregs	[22]