Immunosurveillance in clinical cancer management.
Guido KroemerTimothy A ChanAlexander M M EggermontLorenzo GalluzziPublished in: CA: a cancer journal for clinicians (2023)
The progression of cancer involves a critical step in which malignant cells escape from control by the immune system. Antineoplastic agents are particularly efficient when they succeed in restoring such control (immunosurveillance) or at least establish an equilibrium state that slows down disease progression. This is true not only for immunotherapies, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), but also for conventional chemotherapy, targeted anticancer agents, and radiation therapy. Thus, therapeutics that stress and kill cancer cells while provoking a tumor-targeting immune response, referred to as immunogenic cell death, are particularly useful in combination with ICIs. Modern oncology regimens are increasingly using such combinations, which are referred to as chemoimmunotherapy, as well as combinations of multiple ICIs. However, the latter are generally associated with severe side effects compared with single-agent ICIs. Of note, the success of these combinatorial strategies against locally advanced or metastatic cancers is now spurring successful attempts to move them past the postoperative (adjuvant) setting to the preoperative (neoadjuvant) setting, even for patients with operable cancers. Here, the authors critically discuss the importance of immunosurveillance in modern clinical cancer management.
Keyphrases
- locally advanced
- papillary thyroid
- radiation therapy
- cell death
- immune response
- squamous cell carcinoma
- rectal cancer
- squamous cell
- small cell lung cancer
- childhood cancer
- patients undergoing
- cell cycle arrest
- palliative care
- lymph node metastasis
- cancer therapy
- young adults
- clinical trial
- small molecule
- oxidative stress
- drug delivery
- stress induced
- drug induced
- radiation induced
- pi k akt