Targeting Regulatory Cells in Cancer: Old and New Approaches in Immunotherapy

About this Research Topic

Background

In recent years, immunotherapy has emerged as an attractive treatment option for many types of cancer, proving to be effective in various advanced malignancies, either alone or in combination with conventional chemotherapy. The development and clinical application of immune checkpoint inhibitors represent a major breakthrough in cancer immunotherapy. Unfortunately, many patients fail to respond to or develop resistance.

It is well known that the presence of the regulatory cells (e.g., M2 macrophages, Treg, Breg, and tolerogenic dendritic cells) in the tumor microenvironment (TME) is a crucial factor in the establishment of an immunosuppressive environment, which determines the anergy of effector immune cells (e.g., cytotoxic T lymphocytes and natural killer cells), which become unable to reject the tumor, favoring cancer cell growth, survival, migration, and invasion, leading to metastasis and resistance to drug treatment.

In this Research Topic, we aim to focus on strategies to target regulatory cells present in the TME as the inhibition/elimination of these cells represents a promising strategy to fight cancer. We are also interested in the plasticity of the regulatory cells and strategies to change their phenotypes, innovative technologies, and new experimental models.

We welcome a wide range of research (Original Research, Methods, Review/mini-Review, and Perspective articles). In this article collection we are interested to cover the following specific questions:

• Strategies to inhibit/eliminate the regulatory cells from the TME (e.g., killing, inactivation, differentiation into effector cells).
• Studies that test the combination of established and innovative approaches (e.g., drug repurposing, the combination of TME-modulating drugs with ICIs).
• Studies characterizing the plasticity of regulatory cells in the tumor microenvironment
• Studies on bispecific antibodies and anticancer vaccines.
• New technological approaches to targeting regulatory cells in cancer.
• New experimental models, both in vitro and in vivo.

Manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomics or transcriptomics databases may be considered provided they are innovative and accompanied by robust and relevant validation (e.g., single database analyses will not be considered).

Keywords: Regulatory cells, M2 macrophages, Treg cells, Breg cells, Tolerogenic DC, Cell plasticity, Tumor microenvironment, Immunotherapy, Drug repurposing

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