Department of Biomedical Sciences, Humanitas University, Via Rita Levi Montalcini 4, Pieve Emanuele, 20089, Milano, Italy.
Adaptive Immunity Laboratory, Humanitas Clinical and Research Center, Via Manzoni 56, Rozzano, 20089, Milano, Italy.
Cancer Immunol Immunother. 2018 Jun;67(6):989-998. doi: 10.1007/s00262-017-2113-9. Epub 2018 Jan 15.
Cancer immunotherapy is based on the premise that activated, pro-inflammatory T cell responses to tumor will mostly combat tumor growth. Nowadays accepted as largely valid, this hypothesis has been formed as a result of extensive theoretical and experimental argumentation on the inherent function of the immune system and the nature of the immunological self, dating back to the foundations of immunology. These arguments have also been affected by how current working hypotheses were set by researchers, an issue that has been the focus of study by medical anthropologists. As a result of these processes, cancer immunotherapy has developed into a truly promising anti-cancer strategy, with very substantial benefits in clinical outcomes. However, as immunotherapy still has large margins for improvement, a more thorough examination of both the historical background and evolutionary context of current assumptions for how the immune system responds to cancer can help reveal novel, testable questions. We describe how attempting to answer some of these questions experimentally, such as identifying the contributors of tumor-associated fibrosis, has led to potentially useful insights on how to improve immunotherapy.
癌症免疫疗法基于这样一个前提,即激活的、促炎的 T 细胞对肿瘤的反应将在很大程度上对抗肿瘤生长。这个假说现在被广泛认为是有效的,它是在对免疫系统的固有功能和免疫学自我的本质进行广泛的理论和实验论证的基础上形成的,可以追溯到免疫学的基础。这些论点也受到了研究人员如何设定当前工作假设的影响,这个问题一直是医学人类学家研究的焦点。由于这些过程,癌症免疫疗法已经发展成为一种非常有前途的抗癌策略,在临床结果方面带来了非常显著的益处。然而,由于免疫疗法仍有很大的改进空间,更全面地考察当前关于免疫系统如何应对癌症的假设的历史背景和进化背景,可以帮助揭示新的、可检验的问题。我们描述了如何通过实验来尝试回答其中的一些问题,例如确定肿瘤相关纤维化的贡献者,这为如何改进免疫疗法提供了有潜在价值的见解。