Influencing the Immune System
One strategy for future immune therapies is to control existing immune cells in the body and direct them to take specific actions. For example: "Implants that sit in the body and reprogram a person's immune cells could be used to treat a range of infectious diseases and even cancer. In a trial on mice with an aggressive melanoma that usually kills within 25 days, the new treatment saved 90% of the group. Because cancer cells originate within the body, the immune system usually leaves them alone. Therapies exist that involve removing immune cells from the body before priming them to attack malignant tissue and injecting them back into a patient. Results are not encouraging, though - more than 90% of re-injected cells die before they can have any effect ... [researchers] have now developed a technique that directs the immune system from within the body - a method that is more efficient and potentially cheaper too. ... The team thinks modified versions of [their work] could be effective against a range of cancers and infectious diseases. These might also help reprogram the immune system to combat autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, caused by immune cells destroying insulin-producing cells in the pancreas."
Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16391-implant-raises-cellular-army-to-attack-cancer.html