Integrating Bioinformatics Strategies in Cancer Immunotherapy: Current and Future Perspectives

Abstract

: For the past few decades, the mechanisms of immune responses to cancer have been exploited extensively and significant attention has been given into exploiting the therapeutic potential of the immune system. Cancer immunotherapy has been established as a promising innovative treatment for many forms of cancer. Immunotherapy has gained its prominence through various strategies including; cancer vaccines, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), adoptive T cell cancer therapy and immune checkpoint therapy. However, the full potential of cancer immunotherapy is yet to be attained. Recent studies have identified the use of bioinformatics tools as a viable option to help transform the treatment paradigm of several tumors by providing a therapeutically efficient method of cataloging, predicting and selecting immunotherapeutic targets which are known bottlenecks in the application of immunotherapy. Herein, we gave an insightful overview of the types of immunotherapy techniques used currently, their mechanisms of action and discussed some bioinformatics tools and databases applied in the immunotherapy of cancer. This review also provides some future perspectives in the use of bioinformatics tools for immunotherapy.

BRCA1-Associated Protein Is a Potential Prognostic Biomarker and Is Correlated With Immune Infiltration in Liver Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Pan-Cancer Analysis

“…Tumor immunology is a trending topic in cancer research. Immune-related mechanisms play important roles in multiple pathophysiological progresses (Rožman, 2018;Gonzalo and Coll-Bonfill, 2019;Walker et al, 2019), and immunotherapeutic strategies are considered as a promising direction for the treatment of many cancers (Washah et al, 2020). Immunotherapy, such as programmed death-1 (PD-1) and programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) inhibitors, plays a good anti-tumor effect in the treatment of malignant tumors, such as lung cancer (Cheng et al, 2020;Eguren-Santamaria et al, 2020) and melanoma (Cuevas and Daud, 2018;Albershardt et al, 2020).…”

Prognostic value and immunological role of cathepsin S gene in pan‑cancer

“…Immunotherapy has revolutionized the field of cancer treatment, offering a promising direction for tumor treatment research (4). Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are monoclonal antibodies that reportedly strengthen T cell-mediated antitumor immunity and improve immune clearance of tumor cells (5,6). Antibodies for programmed death-1 (PD-1) and programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) (7) have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in the treatment of malignant tumors and have demonstrated promising results in clinical trials (8).…”

Analysis of the key prognostic genes and potential traditional Chinese medicine therapeutic targets in glioblastoma based on bioinformatics and network pharmacology methods

“…Based on tumor microarray or sequencing data, tumor bioinformatics analysis was conducted to screen differentially-expressed genes (DEGs), providing a new target reference for molecular mechanism research and prognostic evaluation of cancer. Washah et al ( 6 ) analyzed the principle and prospects of bioinformatics tools and databases in detail and concluded that they offer significant advantages and have broad prospects in the treatment of cancer. Relevant predictions indicate that CCNB1, CCNA2, COL1A1, and COL1A2 (extracted by bioinformatics screening) play a key role in malignant progression and the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma and colon cancer ( 7 , 8 ).…”