2021
July
Radiotherapy from the inside out? TRT enhances immunotherapy
July 28, 2021
In the setting of cancer, radiotherapy can directly damage or kill tumor cells, and can act as an in situ vaccine that triggers antitumor immunity; the contribution of each of these mechanisms varies based on the dose. In most cases, radiation is delivered as targeted external beam radiotherapy (EBRT), but not all tumors...
A20 downregulation: a strength and a weakness for cancer
July 21, 2021
Although immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy has shown impressive benefits in treating lung cancer, only a minority (~20%) of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) respond to anti-PD-1/anti-PD-L1 therapy. The reasons are incompletely understood, but the tumor microenvironment and its inflammatory state could play a key role. Recently reported in Science Translational Medicine...
T<FR> are the new suppressive kids on the block for tumors
July 14, 2021
Regulatory T cells (Treg) can differentiate into follicular regulatory T cells (TFR) that have important roles in secondary lymphoid organs and may have higher suppressive activity. However, their role in antitumor immunity has not been elucidated. Eschweiler et al. investigated the role of TFR in cancer, analyzing their function, characteristics, and effects on...
In some tissues, tumors are not seen as a prime suspect
July 7, 2021
Clinically, heterogeneous immune responses have been detected between patients, between tumors in the same patient, and even by disease site. Some tumor microenvironments (TME) are typically immune cold and respond poorly to immunotherapy, such as pancreatic ductal carcinoma (PDAC). However, there are some exceptions, which provides the hope that a mechanistic understanding of...
