Cancer Immunology - Cancer Immunology and Chemotherapy

Cancer Immunology and Chemotherapy

Obeid et al. investigated how inducing immunogenic cancer cell death ought to become a priority of cancer chemotherapy. He reasoned, the immune system would be able to play a factor via a ‘bystander effect’ in eradicating chemotherapy-resistant cancer cells. However, extensive research is still needed on how the immune response is triggered against dying tumour cells.

Professionals in the field have hypothesized that ‘apoptotic cell death is poorly immunogenic whereas necrotic cell death is truly immunogenic’. This is perhaps because cancer cells being eradicated via a necrotic cell death pathway induce an immune response by triggering dendritic cells to mature, due to inflammatory response stimulation. On the other hand, apoptosis is connected to slight alterations within the plasma membrane causing the dying cells to be attractive to phagocytic cells.

Thus Obeid et al. propose that the way in which cancer cells die during chemotherapy is vital. Anthracyclins produce a beneficial immunogenic environment. The researchers report that when killing cancer cells with this agent uptake and presentation by antigen presenting dendritic cells is encouraged, thus allowing a T-cell response which can shrink tumours. Therefore activating tumour-killing T-cells is crucial for immunotherapy success.

However, advanced cancer patients with immunosuppression have left researchers in a dilemma as to how to activate their T-cells. The way the host dendritic cells react and uptake tumour antigens to present to CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells is the key to success of the treatment.