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Editorial
. 2022 Sep;12(9):e1051.
doi: 10.1002/ctm2.1051.

A path forward to improving the specificity of immunotherapies

Affiliations
Editorial

A path forward to improving the specificity of immunotherapies

Brittany Barber et al. Clin Transl Med. 2022 Sep.
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The experimental overview schemes in Figures 1 and 2 use templates from BioRender.com.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Identifying tumour‐specific immune changes and processes. While the immune infiltrate in tumours has been studied fairly extensively, little is known about immune processes in human inflamed tissues. We recently compared the immune infiltrate of inflamed (non‐malignant) oral mucosa and HNSCC tissues and found extensive immunological congruence including the presence of PD‐1+ expressing T cells as well as mature dendritic cells enriched in immunoregulatory molecules (mregDCs)
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Discovering novel tumour‐specific immune cell interactions. We used NicheNet to predict which ligand‐receptor interactions between immune cells were enriched in HNSCC over inflamed tissues (blue box). We experimentally confirmed these predictions, which led to our discovery that IL1R1+ ICOS+ Tregs are highly enriched in HNSCC and induced by stimulation via their T‐cell receptor (green box, left). These Tregs could theoretically be depleted by a bispecific antibody to alter the immunosuppressive environment. If directly activating tumour‐specific CD8 T cells was also feasible, then this would allow for much more precise immunotherapies (green box, right)

References

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