2018
August
Exosomal PD-L1: the unsung villain of immune evasion
August 29, 2018
In a recent paper published in Nature, Chen et al. set out to elucidate the details of how PD-L1 upregulation by the tumor, and the subsequent immune evasion, predicts patient response, and how treatment efficacy could be improved. Building on prior data indicating that extracellular vesicles contain bioactive molecules, including PD-L1, the researchers...
Canceling out the consequences with combined PD-L1 and IL-6 blockade
August 22, 2018
Tumors have multiple mechanisms of immune escape, and while certain immunotherapies may help to overcome one pathway, they may have unintended consequences on another. In a study recently published in Cancer Research, Tsukamoto et al. show that both PD-1/PD-L1 blockade and IL-6 blockade have unintended consequences that might hinder their antitumor efficacy, but...
Anti-PD-L1 unleashes the power of the macrophage
August 15, 2018
In a paper recently published in Cancer Immunology Research, Hartley et al. set out to explore how PD-L1 signaling affects the function of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), and in the process they discovered that PD-L1 blockade and PD-1 blockade confer distinct immunological effects. To begin, the researchers examined bone marrow-derived mouse macrophages treated with...
The cell types behind the synergy in dual checkpoint blockade
August 8, 2018
Dual checkpoint blockade targeting PD-1 and CTLA-4 is one of the most effective immunotherapeutic strategies in the clinic, but while the mechanisms of action of each monotherapy have been studied in detail, the mechanism behind the synergy of this dynamic duo is not fully understood. In a recent study, published in Cancer Immunology...
T cell residency status affects prognosis in breast cancer
August 1, 2018
Inspired by the knowledge that the quantity of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) is prognostic for improved survival in breast cancer (BC) patients, particularly those with triple-negative (TNBC) and HER2-overexpressing (HER2+) subtypes, Savas and Virassamy et al., as described in Nature Medicine, set out to uncover whether specific T cell subpopulations affect prognosis in BC...
