Scheidegger Stephan, Mingo Barba Sergio, Gaipl Udo S
ZHAW School of Engineering, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, 8401 Winterthur, Switzerland.
Faculty of Science and Medicine, University of Fribourg, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland.
Cancers (Basel). 2021 Nov 17;13(22):5764. doi: 10.3390/cancers13225764.
There is some evidence that radiotherapy (RT) can trigger anti-tumor immune responses. In addition, hyperthermia (HT) is known to be a tumor cell radio-sensitizer. How HT could enhance the anti-tumor immune response produced by RT is still an open question. The aim of this study is the evaluation of potential dynamic effects regarding the adaptive immune response induced by different combinations of RT fractions with HT. The adaptive immune system is considered as a trainable unit (perceptron) which compares danger signals released by necrotic or apoptotic cell death with the presence of tumor- and host tissue cell population-specific molecular patterns (antigens). To mimic the changes produced by HT such as cell radio-sensitization or increase of the blood perfusion after hyperthermia, simplistic biophysical models were included. To study the effectiveness of the different RT+HT treatments, the Tumor Control Probability (TCP) was calculated. In the considered scenarios, the major effect of HT is related to the enhancement of the cell radio-sensitivity while perfusion or heat-based effects on the immune system seem to contribute less. Moreover, no tumor vaccination effect has been observed. In the presented scenarios, HT boosts the RT cell killing but it does not fundamentally change the anti-tumor immune response.
有证据表明放疗（RT）可引发抗肿瘤免疫反应。此外，热疗（HT）已知是一种肿瘤细胞放射增敏剂。热疗如何增强放疗产生的抗肿瘤免疫反应仍是一个悬而未决的问题。本研究的目的是评估不同放疗分次与热疗组合诱导的适应性免疫反应的潜在动态效应。适应性免疫系统被视为一个可训练单元（感知器），它将坏死或凋亡细胞死亡释放的危险信号与肿瘤和宿主组织细胞群体特异性分子模式（抗原）的存在进行比较。为了模拟热疗产生的变化，如细胞放射增敏或热疗后血液灌注增加，纳入了简单的生物物理模型。为了研究不同放疗+热疗治疗的有效性，计算了肿瘤控制概率（TCP）。在所考虑的情况下，热疗的主要作用与细胞放射敏感性的增强有关，而灌注或基于热的对免疫系统的作用似乎贡献较小。此外，未观察到肿瘤疫苗接种效应。在所呈现的情况下，热疗增强了放疗的细胞杀伤作用，但并未从根本上改变抗肿瘤免疫反应。
