Interleukins: Role in cancer and its immunotherapy

Interleukins are a very important family of cytokines; they are the messengers that assist immune cells to communicate with each other. Interleukins plays a pivotal role in innate and adaptive immune responses by balancing immune cell proliferation, differentiation and regulation. Interleukins aid immune cells in killing cancer cells while simultaneously assisting cancer cells in evading the immune response which leads tumor formation. Some interleukins are very effective at activating effector immune cells to kill cancer cells and also used for cancer immunotherapy. Interleukins are utilized in cancer immunotherapy alone or in combination with other therapies such as CAR-T, checkpoint inhibitors, or chemotherapy. In this review, we will explore the role of different interleukins in cancer and how researchers modified and therapeutically used them to treat cancer (e.g. IL-2, IL-12, IL-15, IL-17, IL-6, IL-18 etc.,).