scholarly journals Targeting nuclear acid-mediated immunity in cancer immune checkpoint inhibitor therapies

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miaoqin Chen ◽  
Shiman Hu ◽  
Yiling Li ◽  
Ting Ting Jiang ◽  
Hongchuan Jin ◽  
...  

AbstractCancer immunotherapy especially immune checkpoint inhibition has achieved unprecedented successes in cancer treatment. However, there are many patients who failed to benefit from these therapies, highlighting the need for new combinations to increase the clinical efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors. In this review, we summarized the latest discoveries on the combination of nucleic acid-sensing immunity and immune checkpoint inhibitors in cancer immunotherapy. Given the critical role of nuclear acid-mediated immunity in maintaining the activation of T cell function, it seems that harnessing the nuclear acid-mediated immunity opens up new strategies to enhance the effect of immune checkpoint inhibitors for tumor control.

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (15) ◽  
pp. 7800
Author(s):  
Sally Temraz ◽  
Farah Nassar ◽  
Firas Kreidieh ◽  
Deborah Mukherji ◽  
Ali Shamseddine ◽  
...  

Disruptions in the human gut microbiome have been associated with a cycle of hepatocyte injury and regeneration characteristic of chronic liver disease. Evidence suggests that the gut microbiota can promote the development of hepatocellular carcinoma through the persistence of this inflammation by inducing genetic and epigenetic changes leading to cancer. As the gut microbiome is known for its effect on host metabolism and immune response, it comes as no surprise that the gut microbiome may have a role in the response to therapeutic strategies such as immunotherapy and chemotherapy for liver cancer. Gut microbiota may influence the efficacy of immunotherapy by regulating the responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Here, we review the mechanisms by which gut microbiota influences hepatic carcinogenesis, the immune checkpoint inhibitors currently being used to treat hepatocellular carcinoma, as well as summarize the current findings to support the potential critical role of gut microbiome in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) immunotherapy.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniele Biasci ◽  
James Thaventhiran ◽  
Simon Tavaré

While the role of CD8+ T cells in mediating response to cancer immunotherapy is well established, the role of B cells remains more controversial (1–3). By conducting a large gene expression study of response to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI), we show that pre-treatment expression of B cell genes is associated with ICI response independently of CD8+ T cells. However, we discovered that such association can be completely explained by a single gene (FDCSP) expressed outside of the B cell compartment, in fibroblastic reticular cells (FRCs), which form the reticular network that facilitates interactions between B cells, T cells and cognate antigens (4–6) and are required to initiate efficient adaptive immune responses in secondary lymphoid organs (SLO) and tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) (4, 7). We validated this finding in three independent cohorts of patients treated with ICI in melanoma and renal cell carcinoma. Taken together, these results suggest that FDCSP is an independent predictor of ICI response, thus opening new avenues to explain the mechanisms of resistance to cancer immunotherapy.


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huan Tong ◽  
He Wei ◽  
Alhaji Osman Smith ◽  
Juan Huang

Tumor immunotherapy, one of the efficient therapies in cancers, has been called to the scientific community’s increasing attention lately. Among them, immune checkpoint inhibitors, providing entirely new modalities to treat cancer by leveraging the patient’s immune system. They are first-line treatments for varieties of advanced malignancy, such as melanoma, gastrointestinal tumor, esophageal cancer. Although immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) treatment has been successful in different cancers, drug resistance and relapses are common, such as in colorectal cancer. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the efficacy of immune checkpoint therapy for cancer patients who do not respond or lowly response to current treatments. N6-methyladenosine (m6A), as a critical regulator of transcript expression, is the most frequently internal modification of mRNA in the human body. Recently, it has been proposed that m6A epigenetic modification is a potential driver of tumor drug resistance. In this report, we will briefly outline the relevant mechanisms, general treatment status of immune checkpoint inhibitors in colorectal cancer, how m6A epigenetic modifications regulate the response of ICIs in CRC and provide new strategies for overcoming the resistance of ICIs in CRC.


2021 ◽  
Vol 218 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Kroemer ◽  
Laurence Zitvogel

Three papers by James Allison and Tasuku Honjo published in JEM between 1995 and 2000 crystallized seminal insights into the role of CTLA-4 and PD-1 in immunosuppression (Krummel and Allison. 1995. J. Exp. Med.https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.182.2.459; van Elsas et al. 1999. J. Exp. Med.https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.190.3.355; Freeman et al. 2000. J. Exp. Med.https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.192.7.1027). These papers laid the basis for modern cancer immunotherapy and led to a shared 2018 Nobel Prize.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Yuka Igarashi ◽  
Tetsuro Sasada

Until now, three types of well-recognized cancer treatments have been developed, i.e., surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy; these either remove or directly attack the cancer cells. These treatments can cure cancer at earlier stages but are frequently ineffective for treating cancer in the advanced or recurrent stages. Basic and clinical research on the tumor microenvironment, which consists of cancerous, stromal, and immune cells, demonstrates the critical role of antitumor immunity in cancer development and progression. Cancer immunotherapies have been proposed as the fourth cancer treatment. In particular, clinical application of immune checkpoint inhibitors, such as anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies, in various cancer types represents a major breakthrough in cancer therapy. Nevertheless, accumulating data regarding immune checkpoint inhibitors demonstrate that these are not always effective but are instead only effective in limited cancer populations. Indeed, several issues remain to be solved to improve their clinical efficacy; these include low cancer cell antigenicity and poor infiltration and/or accumulation of immune cells in the cancer microenvironment. Therefore, to accelerate the further development of cancer immunotherapies, more studies are necessary. In this review, we will summarize the current status of cancer immunotherapies, especially cancer vaccines, and discuss the potential problems and solutions for the next breakthrough in cancer immunotherapy.


Cancers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 2495
Author(s):  
Kazuhiko Matsuo ◽  
Osamu Yoshie ◽  
Kosuke Kitahata ◽  
Momo Kamei ◽  
Yuta Hara ◽  
...  

Cancer immunotherapy aims to treat cancer by enhancing cancer-specific host immune responses. Recently, cancer immunotherapy has been attracting much attention because of the successful clinical application of immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting the CTLA-4 and PD-1/PD-L1 pathways. However, although highly effective in some patients, immune checkpoint inhibitors are beneficial only in a limited fraction of patients, possibly because of the lack of enough cancer-specific immune cells, especially CD8+ cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTLs), in the host. On the other hand, studies on cancer vaccines, especially DC-based ones, have made significant progress in recent years. In particular, the identification and characterization of cross-presenting DCs have greatly advanced the strategy for the development of effective DC-based vaccines. In this review, we first summarize the surface markers and functional properties of the five major DC subsets. We then describe new approaches to induce antigen-specific CTLs by targeted delivery of antigens to cross-presenting DCs. In this context, the chemokine receptor XCR1 and its ligand XCL1, being selectively expressed by cross-presenting DCs and mainly produced by activated CD8+ T cells, respectively, provide highly promising molecular tools for this purpose. In the near future, CTL-inducing DC-based cancer vaccines may provide a new breakthrough in cancer immunotherapy alone or in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. S300-S301
Author(s):  
M. Peravali ◽  
C. Gomes-Lima ◽  
E. Tefera ◽  
M. Baker ◽  
M. Sherchan ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Zhujiang Dai ◽  
Cheng Yan ◽  
Wenjie Zhang ◽  
Daorong Wang ◽  
...  

AbstractCancer immunotherapy has revolutionized the treatment of many malignant tumors. Although immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) can reactivate the anti-tumor activity of immune cells, sensitivity to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy depends on the complex tumor immune processes. In recent years, numerous researches have demonstrated the role of intestinal microbiota in immunity and metabolism of the tumor microenvironment, as well as the efficacy of immunotherapy. Epidemiological studies have further demonstrated the efficacy of antibiotic therapy on the probability of patients' response to ICIs and predictability of the short-term survival of cancer patients. Disturbance to the intestinal microbiota significantly affects ICIs-mediated immune reconstitution and is considered a possible mechanism underlying the development of adverse effects during antibiotic-based ICIs treatment. Intestinal microbiota, antibiotics, and ICIs have gradually become important considerations for the titer of immunotherapy. In the case of immunotherapy, the rational use of antibiotics and intestinal microbiota is expected to yield a better prognosis for patients with malignant tumors.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (14) ◽  
pp. 7511
Author(s):  
Albina Fejza ◽  
Maurizio Polano ◽  
Lucrezia Camicia ◽  
Evelina Poletto ◽  
Greta Carobolante ◽  
...  

The use of immune checkpoint inhibitors has revolutionized the treatment of melanoma patients, leading to remarkable improvements in the cure. However, to ensure a safe and effective treatment, there is the need to develop markers to identify the patients that would most likely respond to the therapies. The microenvironment is gaining attention in this context, since it can regulate both the immunotherapy efficacyand angiogenesis, which is known to be affected by treatment. Here, we investigated the putative role of the ECM molecule EMILIN-2, a tumor suppressive and pro-angiogenic molecule. We verified that the EMILIN2 expression is variable among melanoma patients and is associated with the response to PD-L1 inhibitors. Consistently, in preclinical settings,the absence of EMILIN-2 is associated with higher PD-L1 expression and increased immunotherapy efficacy. We verified that EMILIN-2 modulates PD-L1 expression in melanoma cells through indirect immune-dependent mechanisms. Notably, upon PD-L1 blockage, Emilin2−/− mice displayed improved intra-tumoral vessel normalization and decreased tumor hypoxia. Finally, we provide evidence indicating that the inclusion of EMILIN2 in a number of gene expression signatures improves their predictive potential, a further indication that the analysis of this molecule may be key for the development of new markers to predict immunotherapy efficacy.


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