Cancer immunotherapy: a promising dawn in cancer research

Abstract

Cancer is a highly proliferative disease, which is caused due to the loss of regulation of cell cycle and apoptosis, DNA damage, faulty repair system etc. The cancer microenvironment plays a pivotal role in disease progression as they contain different types of innate and adaptive immune cells. The most important molecules that establish a correlation between inflammation, innate immunity, adaptive immunity, and cancer are the molecules released by inflammatory cells in cancer microenvironment. These molecules secreted by the immune cells, which might activate a pro-tumorigenic and anti-tumorigenic response in cancer. In inflammatory microenvironment, the equilibrium state of immunosuppressive and immunostimulatory signals are important in tumor suppression. The immunotherapeutic approaches could be more effective in cancer treatment. However, advancement in immunobiology and cancer are improving the prospects of immunotherapy alone and/or in combination with the conventional therapies. Thus, the review attempts to highlight a promising and futuristic immunotherapeutic approach in combination with conventional treatment modalities.

Keywords: Cancer; adaptive immunity; immunotherapies; innate immunity; oncolytic viruses and bacteria; tumor-immuno printing strategy.

Figure 1

The schematic representation demonstrates “tumor-immune printing strategy” (TIPS) the tumor microenvironment developing inside a human body and also representing the implication of immunotherapeutics to combat cancer. In the figure, the hexagonal boxes were used to express the various immunotherapies applied against various target molecules in the tumor microenvironment.