Work

Immunotherapy in preneoplastic disease: targeting early procarcinogenic inflammatory changes that lead to immune suppression and tumor tolerance

Year: 2013

Type: article

Abstract: Recent advances in immunotherapy have demonstrated that single agent vaccines can be effective when given as primary prevention before exposure to the causative agent, and partially effective in some patients with existing cancer. However, as tumors develop and progress, tumor-induced immune suppression and tolerance present the greatest barrier to therapeutic success. Preneoplastic disease represents an important opportunity to intervene with tumor antigen-targeted vaccines before these mechanisms of immune evasion outpace efforts by the immune system to destroy precancerous cells. However, as we discuss in this review, emerging evidence suggests that procarcinogenic inflammatory changes occur early in cancer development, in both patients and mouse models of cancer progression. Defining early inhibitory signals within tumor microenvironments will yield insights that can eventually be used in the clinic to target these events and deliver treatments that can be used in addition to cancer vaccines to prevent premalignant and early invasive cancers.

Source: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

DOI: 10.1111/nyas.12076

Authors: Bridget Keenan, Elizabeth M. Jaffee

Institutions: Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Language: English

Topic: Immunotherapy and Immune Responses

Subfield: Immunology

Field: Immunology and Microbiology

Domain: Life Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases