Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) is a primary glial glioma that occurs in all age groups but predominates in children and is the main cause of solid tumor-related childhood mortality. Due to its rapid progression, the inability to operate and insensitivity to most chemotherapies, there is a lack of effective treatment methods in clinical practice for DIPG patients. The prognosis of DIPG patients is extremely poor, with a median survival time of no more than 12 months. In recent years, there have been continuous breakthroughs for immunotherapies in various hematological tumors and malignant solid tumors with extremely poor prognoses, which provides new insights into tumors without effective treatment strategies. Meanwhile, with the gradual development of stereotactic biopsy techniques, it is gradually becoming easier and safer to obtain live DIPG tissue, and the understanding of the immune properties of DIPG has also increased. On this basis, a series of immunotherapy studies of DIPG are under way, some of which have shown encouraging results. Herein, we review the current understanding of the immune characteristics of DIPG and critically reveal the limitations of current immune research, as well as the opportunities and challenges for immunological therapies in DIPG, hoping to clarify the development of novel immunotherapies for DIPG treatment.

No abstract

Background Cuproptosis is a newly discovered form of cell death. It's regulated by a string of genes. The genes are identified to influence the tumor progression, but in glioma, the cuproptosis-related genes are little studied.Method The Cancer Genome Atlas and The Genotype-Tissue Expression were used to screen for SLC31A1 gene expression in glioma and healthy tissue samples. The results were validated using the Gene Expression Omnibus and real-time quantitative PCR. The Human Protein Atlas and The National Cancer Institute's Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium were used to validate our results at the protein level. Multivariable analysis and Kaplan-Meier survival curves were used to examine the relationship between SLC31A1 gene expression, clinical parameters, and survival rates. The online Search Tool for the Retrieval of Interacting Genes/Proteins was used to find the genes and proteins that correlate to SLC31A1. The immune infiltration analysis was performed using the Tumor Immune Estimation Resource databases.Results The glioma patients have higher SLC31A1 expression levels, which increase as the WHO grade escalates. The survival analysis illustrates that the SLC31A1 gene expression negatively correlates with OS, PFS, and DSS. The immune infiltration analysis shows the SLC31A1 gene positively correlates with Th2 cells, Macrophages, and M2 type macrophages and negatively correlates with pDC cells, NK CD56bright cells, and CD8 T cells.Conclusion The SLC31A1 gene expression can shorten the survival time of glioma patients. It also can promote the formation of a tumor-suppressive microenvironment.