Illustration of the interaction between the immune system and anthracycline chemotherapy. The cancer tumour (blue) is treated with anthracycline chemotherapy (pink). The cancer cell damaged by treatment sequentially emits a combination of specific signals during the various stages of its death. The signals emitted lead to recruitment and maturation of dendritic cells (green) in the immune system. The dendritic cells that have infiltrated the tumour activate naive T lymphocytes (pink) which become specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (red), which can effectively recognise and attack the cancer tumour.
