eBook: Advances in Cancer Immunology Research - 4

Immunology vs. Cancer
Tools and technologies are being developed to fight the epic battle
that rages daily in everyone.
Everyone faces the threat of cancer more than a
quintillion times a day. That's a trillion billion times
every day-more than 10 million times every microsecond.
In most cases, cellular machinery fixes the
DNA damage responsible for those potential cancers,
but some mutations escape. Then, the immune
system must take over, but cancer fights back as
strongly as it is attacked-sometimes even more so.
The quintillion cancer challenges come from 10,000
or more instances of DNA damage in every cell-all
100 trillion of them in the human body. But even
that's not all that cancer can impact, and the changes
provide immune-system opportunities. " The genetic
and cellular alterations that define cancer provide
the immune system with the means to generate
T-cell responses that recognize and eradicate cancer
cells, " wrote Daniel S. Chen, chief medical officer at
IGM Biosciences, and Ira Mellman, vice president of
cancer immunology at Genentech.
Attacking those changes forms the foundation of
immunotherapy for cancer, which turns a patient's
immune cells against the disease. Making those
treatments safer and more effective depends on
learning more about the interplay between cancer
and the immune system.
Enhancing innate immunity
The immune system naturally fights cancer as an invader
through innate immunity. Some forms of immunotherapy
amplify these anti-tumor processes.
" Most of these immunomodulatory approaches
have focused on enhancing T-cell responses, either
by targeting inhibitory pathways with immune
checkpoint inhibitors, or by targeting activating
pathways, as with chimeric antigen receptor T cells
or bispecific antibodies, " reported Eric Vivier of the
Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, and
his colleagues. " Although these therapies have led
to unprecedented successes, only a minority of patients
with cancer benefit from these treatments,
highlighting the need to identify new cells and
molecules that could be exploited in the next generation
of immunotherapy. "
Consequently, scientists continue the search for better
cancer-related targets for immunotherapy. As an
example, a team of scientists from the University of
Chicago pointed out several new classes of targets,
including Toll-like receptors. The scientist added that
" therapeutic modulation of key innate immune cell
types, such as macrophages and natural killer cells,
has been investigated. "
New approaches to activation
With solid tumors, the cancerous cells and their immediate
surroundings-known as the tumor microenvironment
(TME)-fight back against the immune
system. For one thing, the TME deactivates T cells.
No one knows just how it happens, but T cells near a
tumor do not fight the cancer.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1593-5 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761313002963 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/2/138

eBook: Advances in Cancer Immunology Research

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