Final answer:
The immune system's cell-mediated response involves T cells and natural killer cells identifying and attacking cancer cells. While cancer can suppress these responses, interventions like therapeutic vaccines aim to strengthen the immune system's ability to fight cancer.
Step-by-step explanation:
Immune Response to Malignant Cells
The immune system employs a variety of mechanisms to target and eliminate cancer cells. Cell-mediated immune responses can effectively fight against cancer cells that express abnormal tumor antigens. These antigens are not recognized during the lymphocyte development process, thus allowing the adaptive immune system to identify and attack these abnormal cells.
Despite the anticancer responses of our body, malignant cells can still evade and suppress the immune system, leading to cancers such as leukemia, where immune cells themselves become malignant. These cancerous cells can also express proteins that block the activation of cytotoxic T cells, or invoke regulatory T cells to suppress immune responses.
Notwithstanding this suppression, interventions aim to externally stimulate cytotoxic T cells or use therapeutic vaccines to boost the immune system's capacity to fight cancer. Internal defenses such as mast cells, basophils, natural killer cells, and phagocytes also play a role in the immune response.
In the process of immune response, T-cells recognize specific epitopes in the context of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, and differentiate into distinct subsets like Th, To, and Td cells which aid in the antigen clearance. Natural killer cells also partake in the innate immune defense by killing cancer cells.