Systemic effects of local radiotherapy

By S. Formenti, S. Demaria. The Lancet Oncology, 2009

921 citations recorded by the source corpus.

SUMMARY Radiotherapy is generally used to treat a localized target that includes cancer. Mounting evidence indicates that radiotherapy also recruits biological effectors outside the treatment field, and has systemic effects. The implications of this aspect are discussed in this review, in the context of understanding the role of the host’s immune system in cooperating with standard cytotoxic treatments. Since effects from both chemotherapy and radiotherapy are sensed by the immune system, their combination with immunotherapy presents a new therapeutic opportunity. Radiotherapy carries the advantage of directly interfering with the primary tumor site, and potentially reverting some of the established immuno-supressive barriers present within the tumor microenvironment, ideally recovering the role of the primary tumor as an effective immunogenic hub. Local radiation also triggers systemic effects that can be harnessed in combination with immunotherapy to induce responses outside the radiation field. This review will cover some of the preclinical and clinical evidence in this regard.

Subfields: Immunology, Oncology, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/615e4a06b256f64f186c65819f1dcb2a6d7ad164

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In Immunology

In Oncology

In Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

Citations in the corpus

Immunogenic cell death and DAMPs in cancer therapy (2012, background): “These authors showed that a recombinant N-terminal fragment of CRT (39-272) is a potent inducer of activation and maturation of B cells and macrophages and can trigger Ig class switching in B cells without T cell help in vitro and in vivo72.”
Regulatory mechanisms of PD-1/PD-L1 in cancers (2024, background): “This process recruits more T lymphocytes to infiltrate the tumor lesion and releases immunogenic factors (such as TNF, IL-1, HMGB1, etc.) to indirectly stimulate the immune system, exerting an immunological killing effect [411].”
Immune parameters affecting the efficacy of chemotherapeutic regimens (2011, background): “The immune-related components of the abscopal effects of radiotherapy are being investigated”
Combining radiotherapy and cancer immunotherapy: a paradigm shift. (2013, background): “A case of an abscopal response in a patient with metastatic, poorly differentiated thymic carcinoma treated in a trial of granulocytemacrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and radiation (51).”