showing 21 related works from this author
Harnessing dendritic cells in cancer.
2011
Dendritic cells (DCs) are central to the initiation of tumor-specific immune responses. However, the tumor microenvironment generates immunosuppressive cells and soluble mediators that compromise DC functions and limit the success of DC-based therapies. Progress in understanding DC metabolism in cancer is uncovering novel therapeutic targets that could restore DC capacity to prime T cells and trigger effective anticancer responses. Accumulating evidence also indicates that conventional chemo- and radiotherapy protocols can cause DC activation, enhance antigen cross-presentation, selectively eliminate immunosuppressive cells and revert the immunosuppression state caused by cancer, suggesting…
Caloric Restriction Mimetics Enhance Anticancer Immunosurveillance
2016
International audience; Caloric restriction mimetics (CRMs) mimic the biochemical effects of nutrient deprivation by reducing lysine acetylation of cellular proteins, thus triggering autophagy. Treatment with the CRM hydroxycitrate, an inhibitor of ATP citrate lyase, induced the depletion of regulatory T cells (which dampen anticancer immunity) from autophagy-competent, but not autophagy-deficient, mutant KRAS-induced lung cancers in mice, thereby improving anticancer immunosurveillance and reducing tumor mass. Short-term fasting or treatment with several chemically unrelated autophagy-inducing CRMs, including hydroxycitrate and spermidine, improved the inhibition of tumor growth by chemoth…
Tumor cells convert immature myeloid dendritic cells into TGF-β–secreting cells inducing CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cell proliferation
2005
The mechanisms through which regulatory T cells accumulate in lymphoid organs of tumor-bearing hosts remain elusive. Our experiments indicate that the accumulation of CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells (T reg cells) expressing FoxP3 and exhibiting immunosuppressive function originates from the proliferation of naturally occurring CD25+ T cells and requires signaling through transforming growth factor (TGF)–β receptor II. During tumor progression, a subset of dendritic cells (DCs) exhibiting a myeloid immature phenotype is recruited to draining lymph nodes. This DC subset selectively promotes the proliferation of T reg cells in a TGF-β–dependent manner in mice and rats. Tumor cells are necessary a…
Cardiac Glycosides Exert Anticancer Effects by Inducing Immunogenic Cell Death
2012
Some successful chemotherapeutics, notably anthracyclines and oxaliplatin, induce a type of cell stress and death that is immunogenic, hence converting the patient's dying cancer cells into a vaccine that stimulates antitumor immune responses. By means of a fluorescence microscopy platform that allows for the automated detection of the biochemical hallmarks of such a peculiar cell death modality, we identified cardiac glycosides (CGs) as exceptionally efficient inducers of immunogenic cell death, an effect that was associated with the in- hibition of the plasma membrane Na + - and K + -dependent adenosine triphosphatase (Na + /K + -ATPase). CGs ex- acerbated the antineoplastic effects of DN…
CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells inhibit natural killer cell functions in a transforming growth factor-beta-dependent manner.
2007
Tumor growth promotes the expansion of CD4+CD25+ regulatory T (T reg) cells that counteract T cell–mediated immune responses. An inverse correlation between natural killer (NK) cell activation and T reg cell expansion in tumor-bearing patients, shown here, prompted us to address the role of T reg cells in controlling innate antitumor immunity. Our experiments indicate that human T reg cells expressed membrane-bound transforming growth factor (TGF)–β, which directly inhibited NK cell effector functions and down-regulated NKG2D receptors on the NK cell surface. Adoptive transfer of wild-type T reg cells but not TGF-β−/− T reg cells into nude mice suppressed NK cell–mediated cytotoxicity, redu…
Innovative therapy, monoclonal antibodies, and beyond: Highlights from the eighth annual meeting
2018
The eighth annual conference of “Innovative therapy, monoclonal antibodies, and beyond” was held in Milan on Jan. 26, 2018, and hosted by Fondazione IRCCS–Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori (Fondazione IRCCS INT). The conference was divided into two main scientific sessions, of i) pre-clinical assays and novel biotargets, and ii) clinical translation, as well as a third session of presentations from young investigators, which focused on recent achievements within Fondazione IRCCS INT on immunotherapy and targeted therapies. Presentations in the first session addressed the issue of cancer immunotherapy activity with respect to tumor heterogeneity, with key topics addressing: 1) tumor heterogeneit…
Characterization of the Microenvironment in Positive and Negative Sentinel Lymph Nodes from Melanoma Patients
2015
Melanomas are aggressive skin tumors characterized by high metastatic potential. Our previous results indicate that Natural Killer (NK) cells may control growth of melanoma. The main defect of blood NK cells was a decreased expression of activating NCR1/NKp46 receptor and a positive correlation of NKp46 expression with disease outcome in stage IV melanoma patients was found. In addition, in stage III melanoma patients, we identified a new subset of mature NK cells in macro-metastatic Lymph nodes (LN). In the present studies, we evaluated the numbers of NK cells infiltrating primary cutaneous melanoma and analyzed immune cell subsets in a series of sentinel lymph nodes (SLN). First, we show …
Abstract CT020: MERIT: introducing individualized cancer vaccines for the treatment of TNBC - a phase I trial
2016
Abstract The majority of metastatic cancers remain incurable since the current methods of treatment often fail to target the heterogeneous nature of each individual patient's tumor. Personalized approaches targeting each individual patient's tumor may therefore bring significant improvements. The Mutanome Engineered RNA Immuno-Therapy (MERIT) consortium will clinically validate a pioneering RNA-based immunotherapy concept for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) by targeting shared tumor antigens and individual neo-antigens in TNBC patients. MERIT combines two personalized treatment concepts: (i) treatment with vaccines containing “off-the-shelf” mRNAs selected from a pre-s…
The intestinal microbiota modulates the anticancer immune effects of cyclophosphamide
2013
The Microbiota Makes for Good Therapy The gut microbiota has been implicated in the development of some cancers, such as colorectal cancer, but—given the important role our intestinal habitants play in metabolism—they may also modulate the efficacy of certain cancer therapeutics. Iida et al. (p. 967 ) evaluated the impact of the microbiota on the efficacy of an immunotherapy [CpG (the cytosine, guanosine, phosphodiester link) oligonucleotides] and oxaliplatin, a platinum compound used as a chemotherapeutic. Both therapies were reduced in efficacy in tumor-bearing mice that lacked microbiota, with the microbiota important for activating the innate immune response against the tumors. Viaud et…
Contribution of IL-17-producing {gamma}{delta} T cells to the efficacy of anticancer chemotherapy.
2011
IL-17 production by γδ T cells is required for tumor cell infiltration by IFN-γ–producing CD8+ T cells and inhibition of tumor growth in response to anthracyclines.
Immune responses during COVID-19 infection
2020
International audience; Over the past 16 years, three coronaviruses (CoVs), severe acute respiratory syndrome CoV (SARS-CoV) in 2002, Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV) in 2012 and 2015, and SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, have been causing severe and fatal human epidemics. The unpredictability of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) poses a major burden on health care and economic systems across the world. This is caused by the paucity of in-depth knowledge of the risk factors for severe COVID-19, insufficient diagnostic tools for the detection of SARS-CoV-2, as well as the absence of specific and effective drug treatments. While protective humoral and cellular immune responses are usually m…
Enterococcus hirae and Barnesiella intestinihominis Facilitate Cyclophosphamide-Induced Therapeutic Immunomodulatory Effects.
2016
International audience; The efficacy of the anti-cancer immunomodulatory agent cyclophosphamide (CTX) relies on intestinal bacteria. How and which relevant bacterial species are involved in tumor immunosurveillance, and their mechanism of action are unclear. Here, we identified two bacterial species, Enterococcus hirae and Barnesiella intestinihominis that are involved during CTX therapy. Whereas E. hirae translocated from the small intestine to secondary lymphoid organs and increased the intratumoral CD8/ Treg ratio, B. intestinihominis accumulated in the colon and promoted the infiltration of IFN-gamma-producing gamma delta Tau cells in cancer lesions. The immune sensor, NOD2, limited CTX…
Trial Watch: Adoptively transferred cells for anticancer immunotherapy
2017
IF 7.719; International audience; Immunotherapies aimed at strengthening immune effector responses against malignant cells are growing at exponential rates. Alongside, the impressive benefits obtained by patients with advanced melanoma who received adoptively transferred tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) have encouraged the scientific community to pursue adoptive cell transfer (ACT)-based immunotherapy. ACT involves autologous or allogenic effector lymphocytes that are generally obtained from the peripheral blood or resected tumors, expanded and activated ex vivo, and administered to lymphodepleted patients. ACT may be optionally associated with chemo- and/or immunotherapeutics, with th…
Classification of current anticancer immunotherapies.
2014
© 2014. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Cross-reactivity between tumor MHC class I-restricted antigens and an enterococcal bacteriophage
2020
International audience; Intestinal microbiota have been proposed to induce commensal-specific memory T cells that cross-react with tumor-associated antigens. We identified major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I-binding epitopes in the tail length tape measure protein (TMP) of a prophage found in the genome of the bacteriophage Enterococcus hirae Mice bearing E. hirae harboring this prophage mounted a TMP-specific H-2Kb-restricted CD8+ T lymphocyte response upon immunotherapy with cyclophosphamide or anti-PD-1 antibodies. Administration of bacterial strains engineered to express the TMP epitope improved immunotherapy in mice. In renal and lung cancer patients, the presence of the ent…
Autophagy-Dependent Anticancer Immune Responses Induced by Chemotherapeutic Agents in Mice
2011
Antineoplastic chemotherapies are particularly efficient when they elicit immunogenic cell death, thus provoking an anticancer immune response. Here we demonstrate that autophagy, which is often disabled in cancer, is dispensable for chemotherapy-induced cell death but required for its immunogenicity. In response to chemotherapy, autophagy-competent, but not autophagy-deficient, cancers attracted dendritic cells and T lymphocytes into the tumor bed. Suppression of autophagy inhibited the release of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) from dying tumor cells. Conversely, inhibition of extracellular ATP-degrading enzymes increased pericellular ATP in autophagy-deficient tumors, reestablished the recr…
NKp30 isoforms and NKp30 ligands are predictive biomarkers of response to imatinib mesylate in metastatic GIST patients
2016
International audience; Despite effective targeted therapy acting on KIT and PDGFRA tyrosine kinases, gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) escape treatment by acquiring mutations conveying resistance to imatinib mesylate (IM). Following the identification of NKp30-based immunosurveillance of GIST and the off-target effects of IM on NK cell functions, we investigated the predictive value of NKp30 isoforms and NKp30 soluble ligands in blood for the clinical response to IM. The relative expression and the proportions of NKp30 isoforms markedly impacted both event-free and overall survival, in two independent cohorts of metastatic GIST. Phenotypes based on disbalanced NKp30B/NKp30C ratio (Del…
The Porto European Cancer Research Summit 2021.
2021
Key stakeholders from the cancer research continuum met in May 2021 at the European Cancer Research Summit in Porto to discuss priorities and specific action points required for the successful implementation of the European Cancer Mission and Europe's Beating Cancer Plan (EBCP). Speakers presented a unified view about the need to establish high‐quality, networked infrastructures to decrease cancer incidence, increase the cure rate, improve patient's survival and quality of life, and deal with research and care inequalities across the European Union (EU). These infrastructures, featuring Comprehensive Cancer Centres (CCCs) as key components, will integrate care, prevention and research acros…
Cancer cell–autonomous contribution of type I interferon signaling to the efficacy of chemotherapy
2014
International audience; The immune system is routinely confronted with cell death resulting from the physiological turnover of renewable tissues, as well as from pathological insults of several types. We hypothesize the existence of a mechanism that allows the immune system to discriminate between physiological and pathological instances of cell death, but the factors that determine whether cellular demise is perceived as a neutral, tolerogenic or immunogenic event remain unclear 1. Infectious insults are accompanied by so-called microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs), i.e., viral or bacterial products that activate immune cells through a panel of pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs)…
Chemotherapy-induced antitumor immunity requires formyl peptide receptor 1.
2015
How dying tumor cells get noticed Besides killing tumor cells directly, some chemotherapies, such as anthracyclines, also activate the immune system to kill tumors. Vacchelli et al. discovered that in mice, anthracycline-induced antitumor immunity requires immune cells to express the protein formyl peptide receptor 1 (FPR1). Dendritic cells (DCs) near tumors expressed especially high amounts of FPR1. DCs normally capture fragments of dying tumor cells and use them to activate nearby T cells to kill tumors, but DCs lacking FPR1 failed to do this effectively. Individuals with breast or colon cancer expressing a variant of FPR1 and treated with anthracyclines showed poor metastasis-free and ov…
Abstract CT201: The Mutanome Engineered RNA Immuno-Therapy (MERIT) project
2015
Abstract The Mutanome Engineered RNA Immuno-Therapy (MERIT) consortium will clinically and industrially validate a pioneering RNA-based immunotherapy concept that targets individual tumor antigens and tumor-specific mutations in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients. This biomarker-guided, personalized therapy is a collaborative effort of five partners from academia and industry and is funded by the European Commission's FP7 and led by BioNTech AG. TNBC is an aggressive, molecularly heterogeneous cancer that accounts for 20% of all breast cancer patients. The 5-year survival rate is less than 80%. The molecular heterogeneity across TNBCs results in a lack of common targetable molecu…