Pérez-Díez A, Marincola F M
Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.
Cell Mol Life Sci. 2002 Feb;59(2):230-40. doi: 10.1007/s00018-002-8419-5.
Our understanding of how immune responses are generated and regulated drives the design of possible immunotherapies for cancer patients. For that reason, we first describe briefly the actual immunological theories and their common perspectives about cancer vaccine development. Second, we describe cancer vaccines that are able to induce tumor-specific immune responses in cancer patients. However, these responses are not always followed by tumor rejection. At the end of the review, we discuss two possible reasons that might explain this dichotomy of cancer immunology. First, the immune response generated, although detectable, may not be quantitatively sufficient to reject the tumor. Second, the tumor microenvironment may modulate tumor cell susceptibility to the systemic immune response induced by the immunization. Finally, we discuss what, in our opinion, might be the best way to improve cancer vaccine strategies and how the relationship between the tumor and its surroundings might be studied in more details.
我们对免疫反应如何产生和调节的理解推动了针对癌症患者的潜在免疫疗法的设计。因此，我们首先简要描述当前的免疫学理论及其关于癌症疫苗开发的共同观点。其次，我们描述能够在癌症患者中诱导肿瘤特异性免疫反应的癌症疫苗。然而，这些反应并不总是伴随着肿瘤排斥。在综述结尾，我们讨论了两个可能解释癌症免疫学这一矛盾现象的原因。第一，所产生的免疫反应尽管可检测到，但在数量上可能不足以排斥肿瘤。第二，肿瘤微环境可能会调节肿瘤细胞对免疫接种诱导的全身免疫反应的敏感性。最后，我们讨论在我们看来，什么可能是改进癌症疫苗策略的最佳方法，以及如何更详细地研究肿瘤与其周围环境之间的关系。
