Cancer immunotherapies: advances and bottlenecks

Abstract

Immunotherapy has ushered in a new era in cancer treatment, and cancer immunotherapy continues to be rejuvenated. The clinical goal of cancer immunotherapy is to prime host immune system to provide passive or active immunity against malignant tumors. Tumor infiltrating leukocytes (TILs) play an immunomodulatory role in tumor microenvironment (TME) which is closely related to immune escape of tumor cells, thus influence tumor progress. Several cancer immunotherapies, include immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), cancer vaccine, adoptive cell transfer (ACT), have shown great efficacy and promise. In this review, we will summarize the recent research advances in tumor immunotherapy, including the molecular mechanisms and clinical effects as well as limitations of immunotherapy.

Metastatic Kidney Cancer: Does the Location of the Metastases Matter? Moving towards Personalized Therapy for Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma

“…Each regimen has different mechanisms of action and specific adverse events, making it crucial to provide patient-centered care considering individual comorbidities. Immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment, but many trials excluded patients with active or pre-existing autoimmune disorders [31]. In the CheckMate 214 clinical trial, 93% of patients who were treated with nivolumab and ipilimumab experienced some form of immunerelated adverse reactions.…”

Critical roles and clinical perspectives of RNA methylation in cancer

“…29 The impaired crosstalk between cancer cells and immune cells contributes to the continued cancer cell proliferation and distant tissue invasion in cancer progression. [30][31][32] Understanding the mechanisms of immune evasion employed by cancer cells is crucial for developing effective strategies to enhance the immune response against cancer. [33][34][35][36] RNA modifications, such as m 6 A, m 5 C, m 7 G, and m 1 A, have been extensively revealed to participate in regulating tumor immunogenicity and the functions of diverse immune cells.…”

“…By escaping from immune surveillance, cancer cells usually exhibit malignant abilities to escape from immune surveillance recognized and even destroy the immune balance of the organism 29 . The impaired crosstalk between cancer cells and immune cells contributes to the continued cancer cell proliferation and distant tissue invasion in cancer progression 30–32 . Understanding the mechanisms of immune evasion employed by cancer cells is crucial for developing effective strategies to enhance the immune response against cancer 33–36 .…”

Application of exosomes in tumor immunity: recent progresses

“…At present, applied clinical immunotherapy includes Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Immunotherapy (CAT-T) drugs, cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4) inhibitors, and programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) or ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitors. Although tumor immunotherapy has good therapeutic effects, there are still bottlenecks, such as a low immune response rate due to reduce infiltration and functional exhaustion of immune cells, as well as immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment (TME) ( Rui et al, 2023 ). Thus, it is still urgent to develop new strategies to enhance the efficacy in immunotherapy.…”