https://escholarship.org/content/qt5st231s3/qt5st231s3.pdf?t=omsseb

Primary, Adaptive, and Acquired Resistance to Cancer Immunotherapy.

Here, the authors discuss how the immune activities of myeloid cells, such as macrophages and dendritic cells, are affected by the immunosuppressive tumour environment. They propose that tumours can evade the immune system by promoting aberrant differentiation and function of the entire myeloid system.

Coordinated regulation of myeloid cells by tumours

Kinase inhibitors show great promise as a new class of therapeutics. Here we describe an efficient way to determine kinase inhibitor specificity by measuring binding of small molecules to the ATP site of kinases. We have profiled 20 kinase inhibitors, including 16 that are approved drugs or in clinical development, against a panel of 119 protein kinases. We find that specificity varies widely and is not strongly correlated with chemical structure or the identity of the intended target. Many novel interactions were identified, including tight binding of the p38 inhibitor BIRB-796 to an imatinib-resistant variant of the ABL kinase, and binding of imatinib to the SRC-family kinase LCK. We also show that mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) found in gefitinib-responsive patients do not affect the binding affinity of gefitinib or erlotinib. Our results represent a systematic small molecule-protein interaction map for clinical compounds across a large number of related proteins.

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/biochem/biochem230/papers2005/week5/lockhart.pdf

A small molecule-kinase interaction map for clinical kinase inhibitors.

Fourteen years have passed since nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) was first shown to serve as a molecular lynchpin that links persistent infections and chronic inflammation to increased cancer risk. The young field of inflammation and cancer has now come of age, and inflammation has been recognized by the broad cancer research community as a hallmark and cause of cancer. Here, we discuss how the initial discovery of a role for NF-κB in linking inflammation and cancer led to an improved understanding of tumour-elicited inflammation and its effects on anticancer immunity.

NF-κB, inflammation, immunity and cancer: coming of age

Dendritic cells (DCs) are central in the orchestration of the various forms of immunity and tolerance. Their immunoregulatory role mainly relies on the ligation of specific receptors that initiate and modulate DC maturation resulting in the development of functionally different effector DC subsets that selectively promote T helper 1 (TH1)-, TH2- or regulatory T-cell responses. These DC-priming receptors include pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), which discriminate between (groups of) pathogens, as well as receptors that bind tissue factors that are produced either constitutively or in response to infection with pathogens, and characterize the type of tissue and the pathogen-specific response pattern of this tissue. Although it is becoming increasingly clear that the selective development of T-cell-polarizing DC subsets is related to the ligation of particular receptors that are involved in DC maturation, several inconsistencies with this concept remain.

Dendritic-cell control of pathogen-driven T-cell polarization.

Objective
To determine if the levels of circulating myeloid-derived suppressor cells increase with progression of prostate cancer (PCa); to determine if such cells could contribute to the relative inefficiency of PCa immunotherapy.

/pdf/immunosuppressive-cd14-hla-drlow-monocytes-in-prostate-25q1z3luo9.pdf

Immunosuppressive CD14+HLA-DRlow/− Monocytes in Prostate Cancer

Immunosuppressive CD14+HLA-DRlow/− monocytes in B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma

Glioblastoma patients are immunosuppressed, yet glioblastomas are highly infiltrated by monocytes/macrophages. Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC; immunosuppressive myeloid cells including monocytes) have been identified in other cancers and correlate with tumor burden. We hypothesized that glioblastoma exposure causes normal monocytes to assume an MDSC-like phenotype and that MDSC are increased in glioblastoma patients. Healthy donor human CD14(+) monocytes were cultured with human glioblastoma cell lines. Controls were cultured alone or with normal human astrocytes. After 48 hours, glioblastoma-conditioned monocytes (GCM) were purified using magnetic beads. GCM cytokine and costimulatory molecular expression, phagocytic ability, and ability to induce apoptosis in activated lymphocytes were assessed. The frequency of MDSC was assessed by flow cytometry in glioma patients' blood and in GCM in vitro. As predicted, GCM have immunosuppressive, MDSC-like features, including reduced CD14 (but not CD11b) expression, increased immunosuppressive interleukin-10, transforming growth factor-beta, and B7-H1 expression, decreased phagocytic ability, and increased ability to induce apoptosis in activated lymphocytes. Direct contact between monocytes and glioblastoma cells is necessary for complete induction of these effects. In keeping with our hypothesis, glioblastoma patients have increased circulating MDSC compared with normal donors and MDSC are increased in glioma-conditioned monocytes in vitro. To our knowledge, this has not been reported previously. Although further study is needed to directly characterize their origin and function in glioblastoma patients, these results suggest that MDSC may be an important contributor to systemic immunosuppression and can be modeled in vitro by GCM.

Allan B. Dietz

Papers

Immunosuppressive CD14+HLA-DRlow/− Monocytes in Prostate Cancer

Immunosuppressive CD14+HLA-DRlow/− monocytes in B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma

Normal human monocytes exposed to glioma cells acquire myeloid-derived suppressor cell-like properties.

Platelet lysate consisting of a natural repair proteome supports human mesenchymal stem cell proliferation and chromosomal stability.

High efficiency adenovirus-mediated gene transfer to human dendritic cells.