Ephraim Ramya, Feehan Jack, Fraser Sarah, Nurgali Kulmira, Apostolopoulos Vasso
Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC 3030, Australia.
Australian Institute for Musculoskeletal Science, Melbourne, VIC 3021, Australia.
Cancers (Basel). 2022 Dec 12;14(24):6131. doi: 10.3390/cancers14246131.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a group of diseases that cause intestinal inflammation and lesions because of an abnormal immune response to host gut microflora. Corticosteroids, anti-inflammatories, and antibiotics are often used to reduce non-specific inflammation and relapse rates; however, such treatments are ineffective over time. Patients with chronic colitis are more susceptible to developing colorectal cancer, especially those with a longer duration of colitis. There is often a limit in using chemotherapy due to side effects, leading to reduced efficacy, leaving an urgent need to improve treatments and identify new therapeutic targets. Cancer immunotherapy has made significant advances in recent years and is mainly categorized as cancer vaccines, adoptive cellular immunotherapy, or immune checkpoint blockade therapies. Checkpoint markers are expressed on cancer cells to evade the immune system, and as a result checkpoint inhibitors have transformed cancer treatment in the last 5-10 years. Immune checkpoint inhibitors have produced long-lasting clinical responses in both single and combination therapies. mice are a viable model of spontaneous chronic colitis with immune responses like human IBD. Determining the expression levels of checkpoint markers in tissues from these mice will provide insights into disease initiation, progression, and cancer. Such information will lead to identification of novel checkpoint markers and the development of treatments with or without immune checkpoint inhibitors or vaccines to slow or stop disease progression.
炎症性肠病(IBD)是一组由于对宿主肠道微生物群的异常免疫反应而导致肠道炎症和病变的疾病。皮质类固醇、抗炎药和抗生素常被用于减轻非特异性炎症和降低复发率;然而,随着时间的推移,这些治疗方法效果不佳。慢性结肠炎患者更容易患结直肠癌,尤其是那些病程较长的患者。由于副作用,化疗的使用往往受到限制,导致疗效降低,因此迫切需要改进治疗方法并确定新的治疗靶点。近年来,癌症免疫疗法取得了重大进展,主要分为癌症疫苗、过继性细胞免疫疗法或免疫检查点阻断疗法。检查点标志物在癌细胞上表达以逃避免疫系统,因此,在过去5至10年中,检查点抑制剂改变了癌症治疗方式。免疫检查点抑制剂在单药治疗和联合治疗中均产生了持久的临床反应。小鼠是具有类似人类IBD免疫反应的自发性慢性结肠炎的可行模型。确定这些小鼠组织中检查点标志物的表达水平将有助于深入了解疾病的起始、进展和癌症情况。这些信息将有助于识别新的检查点标志物,并开发使用或不使用免疫检查点抑制剂或疫苗的治疗方法,以减缓或阻止疾病进展。