School of Medical Science and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India.
Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India.
Cancer Rep (Hoboken). 2019 Aug;2(4):e1160. doi: 10.1002/cnr2.1160. Epub 2019 Feb 7.
With the recent advances in the understanding of the interaction of the immune system with developing tumor, it has become imperative to consider the immunological parameters for both cancer diagnosis and disease prognosis. Additionally, in the era of emerging immunotherapeutic strategies in cancer, it is very important to follow the treatment outcome and also to predict the correct immunotherapeutic strategy in individual patients. There being enormous heterogeneity among tumors at different sites or between primary and metastatic tumors in the same individual, or interpatient heterogeneity, it is very important to study the tumor-immune interaction in the tumor microenvironment and beyond. Importantly, molecular tools and markers identified for such studies must be suitable for monitoring in a noninvasive manner.
Recent studies have shown that the immune checkpoint molecules play a key role in the development and progression of tumors. In-depth studies of these molecules have led to the development of most of the cancer immunotherapeutic reagents that are currently either in clinical use or under different phases of clinical trials. Interestingly, many of these cell surface molecules undergo alternative splicing to produce soluble isoforms, which can be tracked in the serum of patients.
Several studies demonstrate that the serum levels of these soluble isoforms could be used as noninvasive markers for cancer diagnosis and disease prognosis or to predict patient response to specific therapeutic strategies.
随着人们对免疫系统与肿瘤发展相互作用的理解的最新进展，考虑免疫参数对于癌症诊断和疾病预后至关重要。此外，在癌症新兴免疫治疗策略的时代，跟踪治疗效果并预测个体患者正确的免疫治疗策略非常重要。由于不同部位的肿瘤或同一患者的原发肿瘤和转移肿瘤之间存在巨大的异质性，或者患者间的异质性，因此研究肿瘤微环境及以外的肿瘤-免疫相互作用非常重要。重要的是，为此类研究确定的分子工具和标志物必须适合以非侵入性方式进行监测。
最近的研究表明，免疫检查点分子在肿瘤的发生和发展中起着关键作用。对这些分子的深入研究导致了目前临床应用或处于不同临床试验阶段的大多数癌症免疫治疗试剂的开发。有趣的是，这些细胞表面分子中的许多都经历了选择性剪接以产生可在患者血清中追踪到的可溶性异构体。
多项研究表明，这些可溶性异构体的血清水平可作为癌症诊断和疾病预后的非侵入性标志物，或用于预测患者对特定治疗策略的反应。
