I just started working on a project related to immuno-oncology and I think this field is (1) really fucking fascinating and (2) rapidly heating up. Two decades

I just started working on a project related to immuno-oncology and I think this field is (1) really fucking fascinating and (2) rapidly heating up. Two decades ago, the centrality of our immune systems in the prevention and/or evolution of cancers was barely appreciated. Now, immune evasion and immune editing are understood to be central aspects of 'cancerness' and cancer immune therapies are being rapidly dreamed up and evaluated. We suddenly (on the timescale of medical research) have chimeric antigen receptors (this post), immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD1, anti-CTLA4), dendritic cell vaccines, adoptive T-cell therapies, growing databases of tumor-associated antigens, and a lot of momentum around tumor sequencing (which can help make immune treatments fully personalized).