Immunotherapy vs Cancer - the reality? (Dec/11/2010 )

Hello all! I am an undergrad student studying Microbiology, and I work for a prostate cancer lab for a cancer research center. This past school term, I have taken advanced immunology / immunology seminar courses which exposed me to the world of immunotherapy against cancer. The idea of stimulating our own natural system to battle the fight the good fight against cancer absolutely exhilarates me. I have been asked by my PI to give a presentation next Friday, the topic being: 'what I have been doing in the lab recently (DNA extraction, Cell harvesting...boring~)', but instead I have been entertaining the idea of doing some 'research' on (actual) research that has been done on immunotherapy against prostate cancer. Through a simple pubmed search, I am absolutely overwhelmed with the results and do not know where to begin tapping into the material. The hope is to try update myself on all recent material on immunotherapy aganist prostate cancer and possibly think of a new research project to take on for my lab.

Which brings me to the reason of my post. Before I meet and talk with my PI about this matter, I wanted to get an opinion from fellow scientists, from the majority of you who are much more experienced and wiser than me, some very general 'introductory' questions.
-How popular/accepted is immunotherapy against prostate cancer amongst the scientific academia? Has there been an upward trend in popularity for this method against prostate cancers or cancers in general?
-What potential downfalls come with studying immunotherapy against prostate cancer? (expenses? potential difficulty in experiments?)
- How realistic is it for my PI to accept my proposal? Is it bordering outside the lines of our research, into the 'experimental therapeutics' region? (our lab mostly deals with screening for drug compounds, esp. for the androgen-independent stage).

I greatly appreciate your advice/comments

Thanks!

ydogyy1

your pi requested a synopsis of your lab activities to date. that's what is wanted, that's what you should give. you can speak to your pi about pursuing a line of research at any time.