Novel Approaches in Immunotherapy to Overcoming Tumor Cell Intrinsic and/or Extrinsic Metabolic Limitations

About this Research Topic

Background

Cancer is one of the main reasons of death worldwide and its heterogeneity limits the effectiveness of different therapeutic modules. The emergence of cancer immunotherapy has revolutionized the treatment approach by greatly benefiting cancer patients. Basically, immunotherapy leverages the potential of the immune system to act against cancer cells and it includes various types such as cell-based therapy (T cell, CAR-T, TCR-T, NK, NKT cells, etc.), vaccination, immune checkpoint blockade therapy, etc. The latest developments in cancer immunotherapy strategies have been effectively utilized in treating different types of cancers. However, the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy has been diminished by the phenomenon of immune suppression which ultimately leads to primary/acquired immunotherapy resistance. It can occur due to multiple factors which can be tumor cell-intrinsic and/or extrinsic. Metabolism is an important mechanism that is altered either in tumor cells or cells present in the tumor microenvironment to promote immune evasion and suppression. This eventually results in undermining the effect of immunotherapy and the progression of the cancer disease. Thus, the need of the hour is to understand recent developments involved in immunotherapy resistance through dysregulation of metabolic pathways and phenotypes involved and discuss the ideas to reverse the resistance.

The cancer patients don’t respond to immunotherapy either due to primary or acquired resistance mechanisms. This can result from tumor intrinsic and/or extrinsic metabolic-related factors. With the advancement of research and technology, metabolism-associated regulation of cancer immunotherapy has gained attention. However, still, the topic is not well studied to the extent that it can be efficiently utilized to improve therapeutic outcomes. Therefore, this research topic is an attempt to attract studies discussing the pitfalls and potential of cancer immunotherapy in overcoming metabolic challenges to improve clinical outcomes so that it can effectively achieve the clinical translation.

This topic welcomes original research articles, reviews, mini-reviews, methods, data reports, opinion, and general commentary regarding but not limited to the following areas:
> Tumor-intrinsic metabolic changes involved in immunoresistance, immune suppression, and immune evasion
> Cells of tumor microenvironment related with metabolic alterations resulted in ineffective immunotherapy
> Immune cells-associated metabolic dysregulation responsible for its exhaustion and inefficiency
> Metabolic pathways and metabolites associated with immunoresistance and ways to overcome
> Combination of immunotherapy and other therapeutic modules to overcome the metabolic challenges to increase its efficacy

Manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by robust and relevant validation (clinical cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this topic.

Keywords: Cancer, Immunotherapy, Metabolism, Tumor microenvironment, Combination therapy

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