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Effects of tumor immune microenvironment on conventional cancer therapies
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Abstract:
The immune system can eliminate malignant cells or prevent tumor growth by recognizing and destroying malignant cells. Under the strong selective pressure from the host immune system, malignant cells can rapidly acquire new phenotypes through high somatic mutations to evade immune surveillance. The selected tumor cell variants make use of all kinds of immunosuppressive mechanisms to establish an immunosuppressive microenvironment to resist and suppress anti-tumor immune response, allowing the tumors expend and become clinically detectable. The current tumor therapies mainly focus on the direct inhibition of tumor cell proliferation, as well as the killing and elimination of tumor cells. However, the growing evidence suggests that the conventional tumor therapies can elicit specific cellular responses that render tumor-cell death immunogenic, which may activate the innate immune signaling pathways and then induce the intrinsic anti-tumor immune responses. This potential mechanism plays a key role in the therapeutic effects of the conventional anticancer treatments, especially in preventing the recurrence of residual tumor cells. Here, we intend to demonstrate the molecular and cellular mechanisms of the anti-tumor immune responses and the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment in the process of tumor development and the conventional anticancer treatments, especially focusing on their effects on the therapeutic effects of the conventional anticancer treatments. We also attempt to explore the rational therapeutic strategies targeting the components of tumor immune microenvironment, which may shed light on the improvement of the current conventional anticancer therapies and the development of new anticancer treatments.
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Project Supported:
Project supported by the Grant from the National Basic Research Development Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2012CB917100), and the Major Research Plan of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.91029719)
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