Focus: Towards
curative cancer immunotherapy: overcoming posttherapy tumor escape
The past decade has witnessed the
evolvement of cancer immunotherapy as an increasingly effective therapeutic
modality, evidenced by the approval of two immune-based products by the FDA,
that is, the cancer vaccine Provenge (sipuleucel-T) for prostate cancer and the
antagonist antibody against cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4)
ipilimumab for advanced melanoma. In addition, the clinical evaluations of a
variety of promising immunotherapy drugs are well under way. Benefiting from
more efficacious immunotherapeutic agents and treatment strategies, a number of
recent clinical studies have achieved unprecedented therapeutic outcomes in some
patients with certain types of cancers. Despite these advances, however, the
efficacy of most cancer immunotherapies currently under clinical development
has been modest. A recurring scenario is that therapeutic maneuvers initially
led to measurable antitumor immune responses in cancer patients but ultimately
failed to improve patient outcomes. It is increasingly recognized that tumor
cells can antagonize therapy-induced immune attacks through a variety of
counterregulation mechanisms, which represent a fundamental barrier to the
success of cancer immunotherapy. Herein we summarize the findings from some
recent preclinical and clinical studies, focusing on how tumor cells advance
their survival and expansion by hijacking therapy-induced immune effector mechanisms
that would otherwise mediate their destruction.
Source: Towards curative cancer
immunotherapy: overcoming posttherapy tumor escape. Zhou G, Levitsky H. Clin
Dev Immunol. 2012;2012:124187.
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