Current Molecular Medicine - Volume 9, Issue 6, 2009

Considerable progress has been made in our understanding of host immune responses to cancer. This includes identification of antigens overexpressed on human tumors and antigen epitopes recognized by the cellular arm of the immune system (CD4+, CD8+ T and NK T-cell populations); identification and characterization of antigen presenting cells (e.g., dendritic cells); co-stimulatory requirements for effecti Read More

NKT cells are true T cells that serve as a bridge between the innate and adaptive immune system, acting as first responders. They recognize lipid antigens rather than peptides, and respond to these when presented by a non-classical class I MHC molecule, CD1d. NKT cells can play a pathogenic role in asthma or a protective role against several autoimmune diseases, in part based on their cytokine profile. In cancer, t Read More

Since multiple lines of experimental and clinical data clearly identified regulatory T cells as an integral part of the immune response, these cells have become a major focus of investigation in tumor immunology. Regulatory T cells are in place to dampen ongoing immune responses and to prevent autoimmunity, but they also have profound effects in blocking therapeutic anti-tumor activity. Therefore regulatory T cells are s Read More

In the vast majority of studies conducted to date, activation of cancer-specific T cell immunity through peptide-based immunization has failed to induce objective tumor regression. This failure is particularly troublesome given that these vaccines often stimulate T cell responses. In this review, we attempt to understand the relative failure of peptide cancer vaccines to achieve clinically meaningful responses. In the first part of t Read More

Tumor-induced immunosuppression is a fundamental problem in cancer immunotherapy and can occur by a variety of cellular and molecular mechanisms, affecting all arms of the immune system. Tumorproduced or elicited factors have been shown to inhibit antigen-specific immune effector function as well as impairment of the development, recruitment and maturation of dendritic cells (DCs) and T cells. A better und Read More

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), known as a primary mediator of tumor-induced angiogenesis, is now understood to have a role in tumor-associated immunosuppression. Initially, VEGF was identified to alter the growth and maturation of the immature granulocyte-macrophage progenitors, and more recently it has been noted that it prevents dendritic cell (DC) precursors from developing into mature, antigenpre Read More

DCs are recognized as the pivotal group of lymphocytes, which induce a variety of antitumor immune responses. Enduring professional antigen presenting cells, DCs eminence to induce adaptive antitumor immune response was exploited, which showed promising results in DCs-based phased clinical studies. Nevertheless, DCs also influence other immune cells to induce multiple arms of immune system to cure cancer. Read More

Since the first reported clinical trial of Dendritic Cell Vaccine (DCV) in cancer in the mid nineties, few hundred clinical trials have been initiated and it was projected that over 3000 patients would be treated in DCV clinical trials by 2008. Despite extensive data to establish its safety, DCV remains an investigational approach, highlighting the need to undertake more meaningful proof of principle studies and more importantly, well desi Read More

Despite advances in biomedical sciences, the prognosis of patients with brain tumors remains poor. Effective treatment is lacking for these central nervous system (CNS) cancers. Targeted immunotoxins are a new class of therapeutic approaches that have emerged for the treatment of human cancers. In this approach, tumor antigen or cell surface receptor is targeted by a chimeric fusion protein consisting of an antibody or a li Read More

The IL-13Rα2 receptor is a high affinity receptor for IL-13 that is used only by IL-13 and is quite distinct from the well known IL-13Rα1 receptor that IL-13 shares with IL-4. It was widely considered to be a secreted receptor that is devoid of signaling activity and functional only as a decoy receptor that retarded signaling via IL-13Rα1. In recent studies, however, it was shown to be capable of robust signaling that results in production Read More

Several associations have been described between the frequency of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I genes in certain populations and the risk of developing nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Associations between ethnic background and geographic distribution, and relative disease incidence have been reported. Populations in geographical areas at higher risk of developing NPC display HLA distribution patterns differ Read More

HPV has been linked to many human malignancies and, as such, represents a major public health crisis. The understanding of HPV biology, however, has helped tremendously in developing prophylactic vaccines, which should help in decreasing mortality due to HPV infections. Understanding HPV biology has allowed researchers to use the virus as a model for the development of not only prophylactic vaccines, Read More