2018
March
Targeting antigen to dendritic cells - no adjuvant required
March 28, 2018
Targeting antigens to dendritic cells (DCs) seems like a logical strategy for cancer immunotherapy, but without co-administration of an adjuvant to activate target DCs, this strategy has shown little efficacy. In a recent paper, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Zeng et al. describe the self-adjuvanting effect of a nanoemulsion delivery system...
Resurrecting IL-2
March 21, 2018
IL-2 is a critical T cell cytokine that promotes effector T cell expansion and survival and improves antitumor functions, but as an immunotherapy, its use has been very limited due to induction of suppressive T cell responses and potentially severe toxicities. In an effort to circumvent IL-2’s less desirable effects, Sultan et al...
Cancer immunity — can it stem from stem cells?
March 14, 2018
Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), lineage-specific adult cells that are reprogrammed to an earlier pluripotent state, bypass the ethical controversy associated with embryonic stem cell use. Because iPSCs and cancer cells overlap in the expression of many tumor-associated genes, iPSCs can prime the immune system for both known and potentially unknown tumor-associated antigens...
TGFβ spells trouble for cancer immunotherapy response
March 7, 2018
Trying to figure out why some patients respond to immune checkpoint blockade while others do not may sometimes feel as hopeless as repeatedly hitting one’s head against a brick wall. However, the latest research by Mariathasan et al. and Tauriello et al., published in Nature, may tone down the headache. While the two...
