Adoptive immunotherapy is determined as "the isolation of antigen-specific cells, their ex vivo expansion and activation, and subsequent autologous administration" and is a promising approach to inducing antitumour immune responses. Identification of tumour antigens and monitoring the persistence and transport of transferred cells has provided our understanding over the mechanisms of tumour immunotherapy. Cell-transfer therapies have seemed beneficial for the treatment of patients with selected metastatic cancers by providing a blueprint for the wider application of adoptive cell transfer (ACT) therapy, and emphasize the requirement for in vivo persistence of the cells for therapeutic efficacy. The magnitude and specificity of immune responses to pathogenic organisms have let a search for ways to arm the immune system and aim it at a specific type of metastatic cancer. Knowledge of immune regulation and effector cell function have accumulated rapidly in the past decade resulting in incremental gains regarding the ability to manipulate host immunity and specifically target tumour cells for immune destruction. Besides, converging information from the fields of molecular biology and cellular immunology has inspired clinical trials using potent immunomodulators and molecularly defined immunogens. The clinical practice of immunotherapy for treating cancer is capitalizing on these advances, and recent efforts in ACT therapy provide an excellent example of this progress.