Immune evasion is a common reason causing the failure of anticancer immune therapy. Small interfering RNA (siRNA), which can activate the innate and adaptive immune system responses by silencing immune-relevant genes, have been demonstrated to be a p...
Glioblastoma (GBM) is an exceedingly aggressive primary brain tumor defined by rapid growth, extensive infiltration, and resistance to standard therapies. A central factor driving these malignancies is the subpopulation of glioblastoma stem cells (GS...
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a highly aggressive malignancy characterized by complex interactions within the tumor microenvironment (TME) that facilitate immune evasion and tumor progression. The TME consists of diverse cellular c...
Despite advances in diagnostic and therapeutic technology, prostate cancer remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among men. While androgen deprivation therapy and next-generation androgen receptor pathway inhibitors offer durable respons...
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are pivotal modulators of tumor progression and immune function. Given the central role of the immune system in recognizing and eliminating malignant cells, understanding how miRNAs influence immune responses has become essential f...
Tumor cells express a high quantity of exosomes packaged with unique cargos under hypoxia, an important characteristic feature in solid tumors. These hypoxic tumor-derived exosomes are, crucially, involved in the interaction of cancer cells with thei...
In a living organism, cancer cells function in a specific microenvironment, where they exchange numerous physical and biochemical cues with other cells and the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM). Immune evasion is a clinically relevant phenomenon...
The tumor microenvironment exhibits altered metabolic properties as a consequence of the needs of tumor cells, the natural selection of the most adapted clones, and the selfish relationship with other cell types. Beyond its role in supporting uncontr...
Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are prominent cells within the tumor microenvironment, by communicating with other cells within the tumor and by secreting the extracellular matrix components. The discovery of the immunogenic role of CAFs has mad...
Insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) is upregulated in both childhood and adult malignancies. Its overexpression is associated with resistance to chemotherapy and worse prognosis. However, our understanding of its physiological and pathological role i...
Melanoma is one of the most aggressive skin cancers, with increasing rates of occurrence. Although it has not traditionally been considered hormonally driven, recent evidence links androgen receptor (AR) signaling to important aspects of melanoma bio...
Cancer cells harness normal cells to facilitate tumor growth and metastasis. Within this complex network of interactions, the establishment and maintenance of immune evasion mechanisms are crucial for cancer progression. The escape from the immune su...
Viruses have evolved various mechanisms to evade host immunity and ensure efficient viral replication and persistence. Several DNA tumor viruses modulate host DNA methyltransferases for epigenetic dysregulation of immune-related gene expression in ho...
(1) Background: The expression of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), which interacts with programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) on cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs), enables tumors to escape immunosurveillance. The PD-1/PD-L1 interaction results in the...
Cell adhesion regulates specific migratory patterns, location, communication with other cells, physical interactions with the extracellular matrix, and the establishment of effector programs. Proper immune control of cancer strongly depends on all th...
Immune evasion—a well-established cancer hallmark—is a major barrier to immunotherapy efficacy. While the molecular mechanisms and biological consequences underpinning immune evasion are largely known, the role of tissue mechanical stress...
Despite the advances in our understanding of the genetic and immunological basis of cancer, cancer remains a major public health burden with an ever-increasing incidence rate globally. Nevertheless, increasing evidence suggests that the components of...
Receptor tyrosine kinases have been shown to dysregulate a number of pathways associated with tumor development, progression, and metastasis. Axl is a receptor tyrosine kinase expressed in many cancer types and has been associated with therapy resist...
Tumors intricately shape a highly immunosuppressive microenvironment, hampering effective antitumor immune responses through diverse mechanisms. Consequently, achieving optimal efficacy in cancer immunotherapy necessitates the reorganization of the t...
Background/Objectives: Natural killer (NK) cells play a crucial role in tumor surveillance by exerting cytotoxic activity and modulating immune responses. However, tumors employ diverse evasion strategies that limit NK cell effectiveness. This review...
Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among females in western countries, where women have an overall lifetime risk of >10% for developing invasive breast carcinomas. It is not a single disease but is composed of distinct subtypes associated...
The tumor microenvironment (TME) is a critical regulator of tumor growth, progression, and metastasis. Since immune cells represent a large fraction of the TME, they play a key role in mediating pro- and anti-tumor immune responses. Immune escape, wh...
Non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC), comprising basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC), represents the most common type of cancer worldwide, particularly among Caucasians. While BCC is locally invasive with minimal metast...
Cancer immunotherapy has shifted the paradigm in cancer therapy by revitalizing immune responses against tumor cells. Specifically, in primary tumors cancer cells evolve in an immunosuppressive microenvironment, which protects them from immune attack...
Classic Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) is a lymphoid neoplasm composed of rare neoplastic Hodgkin and Reed–Sternberg (HRS) cells surrounded by a reactive tumor microenvironment (TME) with suppressive properties against anti-tumor immunity. TME is mainl...
Recent developments in single-cell multi-omics technologies have provided the ability to identify diverse cell types and decipher key components of the tumor microenvironment (TME), leading to important advancements toward a much deeper understanding...
Metastasis is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths. During the metastatic cascade, cancer cells tightly interact with immune cells influencing each other in the tumor microenvironment and systemically. Monocytes are important components of immu...
Glioma progression is a complex process controlled by molecular factors that coordinate the crosstalk between tumor cells and components of the tumor microenvironment (TME). Among these, immune cells play a critical role in cancer survival and progre...
Gastric cancer remains a major global health challenge, largely due to its biological heterogeneity and limited treatment options for advanced stages. Among the numerous molecular players involved in its pathogenesis, galectins—β-galactosi...
Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are a specialized subset of CD4+ T lymphocytes essential for maintaining immune tolerance and preventing autoimmunity. However, in breast cancer, tumors exploit Tregs to establish an immunosuppressive microenvironment that...
miRNAs are 20–22 long nucleotide non-coding ribonucleic acid molecules critical to the modulation of molecular pathways. Immune evasion and the establishment of a suitable tumor microenvironment are two major contributors that support tumor inv...
Background: Relapsed medulloblastoma (MB) poses a significant therapeutic challenge due to its highly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have struggled to mitigate this challenge, largely due to low T-cell i...
UL-16 binding protein 2 (ULBP2), a human NKG2D ligand, has been identified as a poor prognostic factor in several cancers based on recent comprehensive analyses of immune-related genes using the Cancer Genome Atlas datasets. Despite its clinical sign...
Therapeutic vaccines offer a targeted approach to enhancing anti-tumor immunity with minimal systemic toxicity. Despite advancements in surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy, colorectal cancer (CRC) remains a major clinical challenge, p...
The tumor immune microenvironment, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), is complex, consisting of crosstalk among tumor components such as the cancer cells, stromal cells and immune cells. It is conceivable that phenotypic changes in cancer cell...
Immunotherapy has improved patient survival in many types of cancer, but for prostate cancer, initial results with immunotherapy have been disappointing. Prostate cancer is considered an immunologically excluded or cold tumor, unable to generate an e...
CD99 is a membrane protein critical for various immunological functions, including T-cell activation, protein trafficking, cell apoptosis, and leukocyte movement. It is also highly expressed in certain malignant tumors, contributing to the developmen...
OPN is a multifunctional phosphoglycoprotein expressed in a wide range of cells, including osteoclasts, osteoblasts, neurons, epithelial cells, T, B, NK, NK T, myeloid, and innate lymphoid cells. OPN plays an important role in diverse biological proc...
Intercellular mitochondrial transfer in the tumor microenvironment (TME) is a paradigm-shifting process that redefines cancer–T cell crosstalk. This review explores its dual nature as both a tumor immune evasion strategy and a promising therape...
This review is focused on understanding the reasons why basal cell carcinoma (BCC), the most common, increasingly prevalent cancer, is classified as an “immune excluded” malignancy. It is, despite manifesting one of the highest tumor muta...
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are cell-derived membrane-surrounded vesicles carrying various types of molecules. These EV cargoes are often used as pathophysiological biomarkers and delivered to recipient cells whose fates are often altered in local a...
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a highly heterogeneous malignancy characterized by a complex tumor microenvironment (TME) that plays a critical role in disease progression and therapeutic resistance. Tumor-infiltrating immune cells,...
Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy has caused a paradigm shift in cancer therapeutic strategy. However, this therapy only benefits a subset of patients. The difference in responses to ICIs is believed to be dependent on cancer type and its tum...
Even with all recent advances in cancer therapy, pancreatic cancer still has a dismal 5-year survival rate of less than 7%. The most prevalent tumor subtype is pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). PDACs display an extensive crosstalk with their t...
Prostate cancers may reactivate a latent embryonic program called the epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) during the development of metastatic disease. Through EMT, tumors can develop a mesenchymal phenotype similar to cancer stem cell trai...
Breast cancer is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in women, with over two million new cases reported worldwide each year, the majority of which occur in post-menopausal women. Despite advances in early detection and treatment, approxima...
Regulatory networks controlling cellular plasticity, important during early development, can re-emerge after tissue injury and premalignant transformation. One such regulatory molecule is the cell surface ectoenzyme ecto-5′-nucleotidase that hydrolyz...
Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) are aggressive diseases with a dismal patient prognosis. Despite significant advances in treatment modalities, the five-year survival rate in patients with HNSCC has improved marginally and therefore wa...
Ubiquitination is cells’ second most abundant posttranslational protein modification after phosphorylation. The ubiquitin–proteasome system (UPS) is critical in maintaining essential life processes such as cell cycle control, DNA damage r...
Conventional wisdom holds that nuclear oncogenes and tumor suppressors initiate malignant transformation. However, mounting research suggests that mitochondrial dysfunction—rooted in the unique evolutionary history and genetic autonomy of mitoc...
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