Self/non-self'' Distinction in Anticancer Therapy and Transplantology

Abstract

The main directions of technological breakthrough in biomedicine (the success of transplantation, therapy with monoclonal antibodies in oncology) are connected with modulation of the immune response. In fact, these technologies change the criteria for determining the 'immunological selfhood' at the molecular level. Therefore, the means of treatment appealing to such criteria, can be more accurately called not individualized (personalized) but 'individualizing as they construct 'self/non-self' distinction.