Immunotherapy for Cancer: Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors or Single-Cell RNA Sequencing Approaches

A special issue of Life (ISSN 2075-1729). This special issue belongs to the section "Medical Research".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2022) | Viewed by 4689

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
IRCCS Istituto Tumori Giovanni Paolo II, 70124 Bari, Italy
Interests: gastrointestinal tumors; translational research; clinical trials

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Guest Editor
Immunology Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, 15731 Tabriz, Iran
Interests: immunology; systems biology; cancer

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Guest Editor
Laboratory of Experimental Pharmacology, IRCCS, Istituto Tumori Giovanni Paolo II, 70124 Bari, Italy
Interests: immunology; cancer; immune checkpoints; single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq)

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues

Based on the global cancer burden, 19.3 million new cancer cases (18.1 million excluding nonmelanoma skin cancer) and almost 10.0 million cancer deaths (9.9 million excluding nonmelanoma skin cancer) occurred in 2020. Tumor heterogeneity is one of the biggest challenges limiting the effectiveness and the impact of targeted therapy. It is critical for cancer growth and it is vital to consider the gene expression patterns of individual cells in detail. Numerous subsets of cells are sequenced using conventional sequencing methods. As a result, rare cell clones that may be involved in tumor growth are hidden. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) solves the drawbacks of conventional RNA sequencing by measuring the entire transcriptome at a single-cell resolution and discriminating between distinct cell types by clustering various cells in tumor tissue.

Additionally, this offers a better understanding of the molecular pathways that promote cancer progression and identifies somatic mutations throughout malignancy. The application of these technologies has a significant impact on cancer immunotherapy, such as identification of novel immune checkpoints and revealing the expression pattern of immune checkpoint inhibitors in the specific cancer type and also in the individual cells, which allows for a deeper understanding of the molecular and cellular interactions between cancer and the immune system. Single-cell technologies applied to tumor and blood samples have been generated. It will continue to create lots of new data with a direct effect on translational clinical research, leading to the identification of potential biomarkers. 

Prof. Dr. Nicola Silvestris
Prof. Dr. Behzad Baradaran
Dr. Afshin Derakhshani
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq)
  • tumor heterogeneity
  • immune checkpoint inhibitors
  • tumor microenvironment
  • immunotherapy

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

25 pages, 1618 KiB  
Review
Immunotherapy for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: New Prospects for the Cancer Therapy
by Rossella Fasano, Mahdi Abdoli Shadbad, Oronzo Brunetti, Antonella Argentiero, Angela Calabrese, Patrizia Nardulli, Roberto Calbi, Behzad Baradaran and Nicola Silvestris
Life 2021, 11(12), 1355; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11121355 - 7 Dec 2021
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4223
Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. HCC patients may benefit from liver transplantation, hepatic resection, radiofrequency ablation, transcatheter arterial chemoembolization, and targeted therapies. The increased infiltration of immunosuppressive immune cells and the elevated expression of immunosuppressive factors [...] Read more.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. HCC patients may benefit from liver transplantation, hepatic resection, radiofrequency ablation, transcatheter arterial chemoembolization, and targeted therapies. The increased infiltration of immunosuppressive immune cells and the elevated expression of immunosuppressive factors in the HCC microenvironment are the main culprits of the immunosuppressive nature of the HCC milieu. The immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment can substantially attenuate antitumoral immune responses and facilitate the immune evasion of tumoral cells. Immunotherapy is an innovative treatment method that has been promising in treating HCC. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), adoptive cell transfer (ACT), and cell-based (primarily dendritic cells) and non-cell-based vaccines are the most common immunotherapeutic approaches for HCC treatment. However, these therapeutic approaches have not generally induced robust antitumoral responses in clinical settings. To answer to this, growing evidence has characterized immune cell populations and delineated intercellular cross-talk using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technologies. This review aims to discuss the various types of tumor-infiltrating immune cells and highlight their roles in HCC development. Besides, we discuss the recent advances in immunotherapeutic approaches for treating HCC, e.g., ICIs, dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccines, non-cell-based vaccines, oncolytic viruses (OVs), and ACT. Finally, we discuss the potentiality of scRNA-seq to improve the response rate of HCC patients to immunotherapeutic approaches. Full article
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