Tumor immunotherapy: making an immortal army

Abstract

Manipulation of cell renewal pathways creates T memory stem cells that can generate a sustained and targeted immune response. These findings have broad implications for vaccine development and immunotherapy.

Figure 1

Same pathway, different outcomes? During hematopoiesis in the bone marrow, the Wnt–β-catenin pathway limits the proliferation and differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) so that division can regenerate HSCs in addition to the multipotent stem cells (MSCs) that give rise to lymphoid progenitor cells (LPCs) and myeloid progenitor stem cells (MPCs). Gattinoni et al. induced this pathway in mature CD8⁺ T cells through pharmacological inhibition of GSK-3β during priming, resulting in the generation of memory cells that possess stem cell–like qualities of self-renewal and multipotency. NK, natural killer; RBCs, red blood cells; Ag, antigen; APC, antigen-presenting cell.