One of the major fascinations of my career thus far is understanding why the immune system fails to control or eliminate some immunogenic cancers.
Cancer dormancy brings this question into sharp clinical focus: why do some cancers treated with curative intent come back years or decades after treatment? What role does the immune system play in keeping residual cancer cells from growing in the meantime, why aren’t residual cells eliminated, and what allows them to grow again?
We put together a review on immune evasion in cancer dormancy and metastatic reactivation—now out in @trendscancer — with @GizemEfePhD @LuthriaKaran and with thanks to @BizarMd for the opportunity to write on this important topic.
There’s been a lot of progress in understanding how the immune system controls metastatic outgrowth, how dormant cancer cells escape elimination, and how inflammation can allow them to reawaken. But most of what we know mechanistically comes from mouse models.
Studying this in patients is difficult. The cells are rare, scattered across tissues, and clinically silent. Finding them is hard; figuring out what they’re doing and how they interact with surrounding immune cells is harder.
We discuss what we’ve learned and approaches that could help us study these processes directly in patients. Understanding this biology is essential if we want to prevent late metastatic relapse. I think this deserves more attention and research investment.
authors.elsevier.com/c/1o5RM8Z12yfL…
Cancer dormancy brings this question into sharp clinical focus: why do some cancers treated with curative intent come back years or decades after treatment? What role does the immune system play in keeping residual cancer cells from growing in the meantime, why aren’t residual cells eliminated, and what allows them to grow again?
We put together a review on immune evasion in cancer dormancy and metastatic reactivation—now out in @trendscancer — with @GizemEfePhD @LuthriaKaran and with thanks to @BizarMd for the opportunity to write on this important topic.
There’s been a lot of progress in understanding how the immune system controls metastatic outgrowth, how dormant cancer cells escape elimination, and how inflammation can allow them to reawaken. But most of what we know mechanistically comes from mouse models.
Studying this in patients is difficult. The cells are rare, scattered across tissues, and clinically silent. Finding them is hard; figuring out what they’re doing and how they interact with surrounding immune cells is harder.
We discuss what we’ve learned and approaches that could help us study these processes directly in patients. Understanding this biology is essential if we want to prevent late metastatic relapse. I think this deserves more attention and research investment.
authors.elsevier.com/c/1o5RM8Z12yfL…
