New mechanisms and clinical significance of the modulation of tumor immune environments
Immune cells are major components of the tumor microenvironment.They can eliminate cancer cells and can be"co-opted"by tumors to facilitate disease progression and impact therapeutic responsiveness.Therefore,immune cells are important targets for tumor therapy.Immune therapies,such as chimeric antigen receptor T cells and immune checkpoint blockade treatments,have gained ground-breaking progress in recent years.However,tumor responsiveness to such strategies is still limited.One of the major reasons is that most of the current immune therapies mainly target T lymphocytes of adaptive immunity,whereas many tissue-infiltrating myeloid cells(including macrophages and neutrophils)and B lymphocytes play essential roles in the initiation,maintenance,and exhaustion of T lymphocytes.Exploring the regulation and functions of tumor-associated myeloid cells and B lymphocytes would not only yield better insights into the mechanisms of tumor development but also provide novel targets for independent or combinational tumor therapies.For the past 20 years,we have focused on hepatocellular carcinoma-infiltrating myeloid cells and B lymphocytes and obtained results through a combination of clinical analysis and experimental studies.This review briefly introduces some of these results and proposes future directions for studies in the field of tumor immune environment.
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