Innate immunosurveillance: the next frontier in the cancer immunotherapy toolbox

The concept of cancer immunosurveillance was first described almost 60 years ago by Thomas and Burnet (1). At the time, cancer immunosurveillance was largely based on the hypothesis that the immune system could destroy cancer cells. In the early to mid-2000s, Robert Schreiber’s group performed elegant experiments that provided evidence for this hypothesis and they further developed the concept of cancer immunosurveillance to cancer immunoediting, which involves three stages—elimination, equilibrium and escape (2,3).