• Proceedings of the PSK Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.221-221
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• 2005

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.46 no.10
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• pp.579-588
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• 2023

Sarcomas are rare and heterogeneous mesenchymal neoplasms originating from the bone or soft tissues, which pose significant treatment challenges. The current standard treatment for sarcomas consists of surgical resection, often combined with chemo- and radiotherapy; however, local recurrence and metastasis remain significant concerns. Although immunotherapy has demonstrated promise in improving long-term survival rates for certain cancers, sarcomas are generally considered to be relatively less immunogenic than other tumors, presenting substantial challenges for effective immunotherapy. In this review, we examine the possible opportunities for sarcoma immunotherapy, noting cancer testis antigens expressed in sarcomas. We then cover the current status of immunotherapies in sarcomas, including progress in cancer vaccines, immune checkpoint inhibitors, and adoptive cellular therapy and their potential in combating these tumors. Furthermore, we discuss the limitations of immunotherapies in sarcomas, including a low tumor mutation burden and immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, and explore potential strategies to tackle the immunosuppressive barriers in therapeutic interventions, shedding light on the development of effective and personalized treatments for sarcomas. Overall, this review provides a comprehensive overview of the current status and potential of immunotherapies in sarcoma treatment, highlighting the challenges and opportunities for developing effective therapies to improve the outcomes of patients with these rare malignancies.

• Journal of Microbiology
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.537-545
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• 2005

Even though neutralizing antibodies against the Hantaan virus (HTNV) has been proven to be critical against viral infections, the cellular immune responses to HTNV are also assumed to be important for viral clearance. In this report, we have examined the cellular and humoral immune responses against the HTNV nucleocapsid protein (NP) elicited by virus infection or DNA vaccination. To examine the cellular immune response against HTNV NP, we used $H-2K^b$ restricted T-cell epitopes of NP. The NP-specific $CD8^+$ T cell response was analyzed using a $^{51}Cr-release$ assay, intracellular cytokine staining assay, enzyme-linked immunospot assay and tetramer binding assay in C57BL/6 mice infected with HTNV. Using these methods, we found that HTNV infection elicited a strong NP-specific $CD8^+$ T cell response at eight days after infection. We also found that several different methods to check the NP-specific $CD8^+$ T cell response showed a very high correlation among analysis. In the case of DNA vaccination by plasmid encoding nucleocapsid gene, the NP-specific antibody response was elicited $2\~4$ weeks after immunization and maximized at $6\~8$ weeks. NP-specific $CD8^+$ T cell response reached its peak 3 weeks after immunization. In a challenge test with the recombinant vaccinia virus expressing NP (rVV-HTNV-N), the rVV-HTNV-N titers in DNA vaccinated mice were decreased about 100-fold compared to the negative control mice.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.265-276
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• 2014

The interactions between B7 molecules and CD28-family receptors are crucial in the regulation of adaptive cellular immunity. In cancer, the aberrant expression of co-inhibitory B7 molecules has been attributed to reduced anti-tumor immunity and cancer immune evasion, prompting the development of cancer therapeutics that can restore T cell function. Murine tumor models have provided significant support for the targeting of multiple immune checkpoints involving CTLA-4, PD-1, ICOS, B7-H3 and B7-H4 during tumor growth, and clinical studies investigating the therapeutic effects of CTLA-4 and PD-1 blockade have shown exceptionally promising results in patients with advanced melanoma and other cancers. The expression pattern of co-inhibitory B7 ligands in the tumor microenvironment has also been largely correlated with poor patient prognosis, and recent evidence suggests that the presence of several B7 molecules may predict the responsiveness of immunotherapies that rely on pre-existing tumor-associated immune responses. While monotherapies blocking T cell co-inhibition have beneficial effects in reducing tumor burden, combinatorial immunotherapy targeting multiple immune checkpoints involved in various stages of the anti-tumor response has led to the most substantial impact on tumor reduction. In this review, we will examine the contributions of B7- and CD28-family members in the context of cancer development, and discuss the implications of current human findings in cancer immunotherapy.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.9
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• pp.1086-1097
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• 2022

During the last decades, research and therapeutic methods in cancer treatment have been evolving. As the results, nowadays, cancer patients are receiving several types of treatments, ranging from chemotherapy and radiation therapy to surgery and immunotherapy. In fact, most cancer patients take a combination of current anti-cancer therapies to improve the efficacy of treatment. However, current strategies still cause some side effects to patients, such as pain and depression. Therefore, there is the need to discover better ways to eradicate cancer whilst minimizing side effects. Recently, immunotherapy, particularly immune checkpoint blockade, is rising as an effective anti-cancer treatment. Unlike chemotherapy or radiation therapy, immunotherapy has few side effects and a higher tumor cell removal efficacy depend on cellular immunological mechanisms. Moreover, recent studies suggest that tissue immune responses are regulated by their microbiome composition. Each tissue has their specific microenvironment, which makes their microbiome composition different, particularly in the context of different types of cancer, such as breast, colorectal, kidney, lung, and skin. Herein, we review the current understanding of the relationship of immune responses and tissue microbiome in cancer in both animal and human studies. Moreover, we discuss the cancer-microbiome-immune axis in the context of cancer development and treatment. Finally, we speculate on strategies to control tissue microbiome alterations that may synergistically affect the immune system and impact cancer treatment outcomes.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.5.1-5.22
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• 2022

The approval of immunotherapies such as checkpoint inhibitors (CPIs), adoptive cell therapies and cancer vaccines has revolutionized the way cancer treatment is approached. While immunotherapies have improved clinical outcome in a variety of tumor types, some cancers have proven harder to combat using single agents, underscoring the need for multi-targeted immunotherapy approaches. Efficacy of CPIs and cancer vaccines requires patients to have a competent immune system with adequate cell numbers while the efficacy of adoptive cellular therapy is limited by the expansion and persistence of cells after infusion. A promising strategy to overcome these challenges is combination treatment with common gamma-chain cytokines. Gamma-chain cytokines play a critical role in the survival, proliferation, differentiation and function of multiple immune cell types, including CD8 T-cells and NK cells, which are at the center of the anti-tumor response. While the short halflife of recombinant cytokines initially limited their application in the clinic, advancements in protein engineering have led to the development of several next-generation drug candidates with dramatically increased half-life and bioactivity. When combining these cytokines with other immunotherapies, strong evidence of synergy has been observed in preclinical and clinical cancer settings. This promising data has led to the initiation of 70 ongoing clinical trials including IL-2, IL-7, IL-15 and IL-21. This review summarizes the recent advancements of common gamma-chain cytokines and their potential as a cancer immunotherapy.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.7.1-7.11
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• 2020

Cancer immunotherapy, in the form of vaccination, adoptive cellular transfer, or immune checkpoint inhibitors, has emerged as a promising practice within the field of oncology. However, despite the developing field's potential to revolutionize cancer treatment, the presence of immunotherapeutic-resistant tumor cells in many patients present a challenge and limitation to these immunotherapies. These cells not only indicate immunotherapeutic resistance, but also show multi-modal resistance to conventional therapies, abnormal metabolism, stemness, and metastasis. How can immunotherapeutic-resistant tumor cells render multi-malignant phenotypes? We reasoned that the immune-refractory phenotype could be associated with multi-malignant phenotypes and that these phenotypes are linked together by a factor that acts as the master regulator. In this review, we discussed the role of the embryonic transcription factor NANOG as a crucial master regulator we named "common factor" in multi-malignant phenotypes and presented strategies to overcome multi-malignancy in immunotherapeutic-resistant cancer by restraining the NANOG-mediated multi-malignant signaling axis. Strategies that blunt the NANOG axis could improve the clinical management of therapy-refractory cancer.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.173-182
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• 2005

Heat shock protein gp96 is an endoplasmic reticulum chaperone, belonging to the HSP90 family. The function of gp96 as a molecular chaperone was discovered more than 10 years ago, but its importance has been overshadowed by the brilliance of its role in immune responses. It is now clear that gp96 is instrumental in the initiation of both the innate and adaptive immunity. Recently, the roles of gp96 in protein homeostasis, as well as in cell differentiation and development, are beginning to draw more attention due to rapid development in the structural study of HSP90 and some surprising new discoveries from genetic studies of gp96. In this review, we focus on the aspect of gp96 as an ER molecular chaperone in protein maturation, peptide binding and the regulation of its activity.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.17.1-17.6
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• 2018

Tumor heterogeneity, the cellular mosaic of multiple lineages arising from the process of clonal evolution, has continued to thwart multi-omics analyses using traditional bulk sequencing methods. The application of single-cell sequencing, in concert with existing genomics methods, has enabled high-resolution interrogation of the genome, transcriptome, epigenome, and proteome. Applied to cancers, these single-cell multi-omics methods bypass previous limitations on data resolution and have enabled a more nuanced understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of tumor progression, immune evasion, metastasis, and treatment resistance. This review details the growing number of novel single-cell multi-omics methods applied to tumors and further discusses recent discoveries emerging from these approaches, especially in regard to immunotherapy.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.44 no.8
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• pp.541-548
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• 2021

The discovery of human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) at the turn of the century opened the door to a new generation of regenerative medicine research. Among PSCs, the donors available for induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are greatest, providing a potentially universal cell source for all types of cell therapies including cancer immunotherapies using natural killer (NK cells). Unlike primary NK cells, those prepared from iPSCs can be prepared with a homogeneous quality and are easily modified to exert a desired response to tumor cells. There already exist several protocols to genetically modify and differentiate iPSCs into NK cells, and each has its own advantages with regards to immunotherapies. In this short review, we detail the benefits of using iPSCs in NK cell immunotherapies and discuss the challenges that must be overcome before this approach becomes mainstream in the clinic.