Cancer immunology

Macrophage niches are the anatomical locations within organs or tissues consisting of various cells, intercellular and extracellular matrix, transcription factors, and signaling molecules that interact to influence macrophage self-maintenance, phenotype, and behavior. The niche, besides physically supporting macrophages, imposes a tissue- and organ-specific identity on the residing and infiltrating monocytes and macrophages. In this review, we give examples of macrophage niches and the modes of communication between macrophages and surrounding cells...

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive malignant brain tumour. The average survival time for a patient diagnosed with GBM, using standard treatment methods, is several months. Authors of the article pose a direct question: Is it possible to treat GBM solely with radioactive iodine (¹³¹I) therapy without employing the sodium iodide symporter (NIS) gene? After all, NIS has been detected not only in the thyroid but also in various tumours. The main author of this article (A.C.), with the assistance of her colleagues (physicians and pharmacologists), underwent ¹³¹I therapy after prior iodine inhibition, resulting in approximately 30% reduction in tumour size as revealed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)...

Cancer immunotherapy has made tremendous advancements in treating various malignancies. The biggest hurdle to successful immunotherapy would be the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) and low immunogenicity of cancer cells. To make immunotherapy successful, the 'cold' TME must be converted to 'hot' immunostimulatory status to activate residual host immune responses. To this end, the immunosuppressive equilibrium in TME should be broken, and immunogenic cancer cell death ought to be induced to stimulate tumor-killing immune cells appropriately...

OBJECTIVE: At present, several important trials have been published show that perioperative immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy can improve the prognosis of patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer, which further optimizes treatment options. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the efficacy and safety of perioperative immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy in resectable non-small cell lung cancer. METHODS: The following databases were searched for relevant studies: PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane library (updated 12 October 2023)...

Granzymes are a family of serine proteases, composed of five human members: GA, B, H, M and K. They were first discovered in the 1980s within cytotoxic granules released during NK cell- and T cell-mediated killing. Through their various proteolytic activities, granzymes can trigger different pathways within cells, all of which ultimately lead to the same result, cell death. Over the years, the initial consideration of granzymes as mere cytotoxic mediators has changed due to surprising findings demonstrating their expression in cells other than immune effectors as well as new intracellular and extracellular activities...

Major histocompatibility complex Class II (MHCII) proteins initiate and regulate immune responses by presentation of antigenic peptides to CD4+ T-cells and self-restriction. The interactions between MHCII and peptides determine the specificity of the immune response and are crucial in immunotherapy and cancer vaccine design. With the ever-increasing amount of MHCII-peptide binding data available, many computational approaches have been developed for MHCII-peptide interaction prediction over the last decade...

Worldwide, gastrointestinal (GI) cancer is recognized as one of the leading malignancies diagnosed in both genders, with mortality largely attributed to metastatic dissemination. It has been identified that in GI cancer, a variety of signaling pathways and key molecules are modified, leading to the emergence of an immunotolerance phenotype. Such modifications are pivotal in the malignancy's evasion of immune detection. Thus, a thorough analysis of the pathways and molecules contributing to GI cancer's immunotolerance is vital for advancing our comprehension and propelling the creation of efficacious pharmacological treatments...

BACKGROUND: Integrin subunit alpha L (ITGAL) encodes an integrin component of LFA-1 and is a membrane receptor molecule widely expressed on leukocytes. It plays a key role in the interaction between white blood cells and other cells. There was a significant correlation between the expression of ITGAL and the tumor microenvironment in a number of cancers. However, experimental studies targeting ITGAL and immune cell infiltration in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and the response to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy are lacking...

Despite significant advances in the development and refinement of immunotherapies administered to combat cancer over the past decades, a number of barriers continue to limit their efficacy. One significant clinical barrier is the inability to mount initial immune responses towards the tumor. As dendritic cells are central initiators of immune responses in the body, the elucidation of mechanisms that can be therapeutically leveraged to enhance their functions to drive anti-tumor immune responses is urgently needed...

INTRODUCTION: Malignant ascites indicates ovarian cancer progression and predicts poor clinical outcome. Various ascites components induce an immunosuppressive crosstalk between tumor and immune cells, which is poorly understood. In our previous study, imbalanced electrolytes, particularly high sodium content in malignant ascites, have been identified as a main immunosuppressive mechanism that impaired NK and T-cell activity. METHODS: In the present study, we explored the role of high concentrations of ascites proteins and immunoglobulins on antitumoral NK effector functions...

BACKGROUND: In the precision medicine era, identifying predictive factors to select patients most likely to benefit from treatment with immunological agents is a crucial and open challenge in oncology. METHODS: This paper presents a pan-cancer analysis of Tumor Mutational Burden (TMB). We developed a novel computational pipeline, TMBcalc, to calculate the TMB. Our methodology can identify small and reliable gene signatures to estimate TMB from custom targeted-sequencing panels...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fcell.2021.765772.].

Heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) is a molecular chaperone important for maintaining protein homeostasis (proteostasis) in the cell. Hsp90 inhibitors are being explored as cancer therapeutics because of their ability to disrupt proteostasis. Inhibiting Hsp90 increases surface density of the immunological receptor Major Histocompatibility Complex 1 (MHC1). Here we show that this increase occurs across multiple cancer cell lines and with both cytosol-specific and pan-Hsp90 inhibitors. We demonstrate that Hsp90 inhibition also alters surface expression of both IFNGR and PD-L1, two additional immunological receptors that play a significant role in anti-tumour or anti-immune activity in the tumour microenvironment...

BACKGROUND: The C-reactive protein (CRP)-albumin-lymphocyte (CALLY) index is a novel immune nutrition scoring system associated with cancer prognosis. This study investigated the association between the CALLY index and the long-term outcomes of patients with gastric cancer. METHODS: We included 175 patients with gastric cancer who underwent curative gastrectomies at the Department of Surgery, International University of Health and Welfare Hospital between January 2011 and October 2019...

INTRODUCTION: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) may be associated with hyperprogressive disease (HPD). However, there is currently no standardized definition of HPD, with its risk factors and clinical implications remaining unclear. We investigated HPD in lung cancer patients undergoing immunotherapy, aiming to redefine HPD, identify risk factors, and assess its impact on survival. METHODS: Clinical and radiologic data from 121 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with 136 immunotherapy cases were reviewed retrospectively...

Prostate cancer causes numerous male deaths annually. Although great progress has been made in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer during the past several decades, much about this disease remains unknown, especially its pathobiology. The kinesin superfamily is a pivotal group of motor proteins, that contains a microtubule-based motor domain and features an adenosine triphosphatase activity and motility characteristics. Large-scale sequencing analyses based on clinical samples and animal models have shown that several members of the kinesin family are dysregulated in prostate cancer...

T-DM1 (Trastuzumab Emtansine) belongs to class of Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADC), where cytotoxic drugs are conjugated with the antibody Trastuzumab to specifically target HER2-positive cancer cells. Platelets, as vital components of the blood system, intricately influence the immune response to tumors through complex mechanisms. In our study, we examined platelet surface proteins in the plasma of patients before and after T-DM1 treatment, categorizing them based on treatment response. We identified a subgroup of platelets with elevated expression of CD63 and CD9 exclusively in patients with favorable treatment responses, while this subgroup was absent in patients with poor responses...

BACKGROUND: Gastric cancer (GC) continues to pose a significant global threat in terms of cancer-related fatalities. Despite notable advancements in medical research and therapies, further investigation is warranted to elucidate its underlying etiology and risk factors. Recent times have witnessed an escalated emphasis on comprehending the role of the microbiota in cancer development. METHODS: This review briefly delves into recent developments in microbiome-related research pertaining to gastric cancer...

Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) is a malignant blood cancer with a high mortality rate. Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) influence various tumor outcomes. However, NET-related genes (NRGs) in AML had not yet received much attention. This study focuses on the role of NRGs in AML and their interaction with the immunological microenvironment. The gene expression and clinical data of patients with AML were downloaded from the TCGA-LAML and GEO cohorts. We identified 148 NRGs through the published article. Univariate Cox regression was used to analyze the association of NRGs with overall survival (OS)...

BACKGROUND: The metastasis and aggressive nature of prostate cancer (PCa) has become a major malignancy related threat that concerns men's health. The efficacy of immune monotherapy against PCa is questionable due to its lymphocyte-suppressive nature. METHOD: Endoplasmic reticulum stress- (ERS-) and PCa-prognosis-related genes were obtained from the Molecular Signatures Database and the Cancer Genome Atlas database. The expression, prognosis and immune infiltration values of key genes were explored by "survival R package", "rms", "xCELL algorithm", and univariate-multivariate Cox and LASSO regression analyses...