Abstract
For decades, malignant tumors have been among the infamous non-communicable diseases that most affect people around the world. Their origin, growth and spread to other body tissues are accompanied by specific immune manifestations, which are in principle identical, but differ in a number of essential aspects.
The participation of immunity in the tumor process was not noticed by the medical public until the beginning of the twentieth century, when practically nothing was known about the structural nature and function of the immune system. All that was known was that immunity was directed primarily against infectious agents.
It was only later that it became clear that there is also an anti-tumor immunity, which not only destroys malignant cells and suppresses their growth, but also selects more viable and more resistent tumor cells, thereby promoting their growth and metastatic spreading of the tumor. It is just the participation of immunity in the cancerogenesis that allows the use of biological therapy (immunotherapy) for the treatment of cancer.