CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes in cancer immunotherapy: A review

By Bagher Farhood, M. Najafi, K. Mortezaee. Journal of Cellular Physiology, 2018

1,434 citations recorded by the source corpus.

CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) are preferred immune cells for targeting cancer. During cancer progression, CTLs encounter dysfunction and exhaustion due to immunerelated tolerance and immunosuppression within the tumor microenvironment (TME), with all favor adaptive immune‐resistance. Cancer‐associated fibroblasts (CAFs), macrophage type 2 (M2) cells, and regulatory T cells (Tregs) could make immunologic barriers against CD8 + T cell‐mediated antitumor immune responses. Thus, CD8 + T cells are needed to be primed and activated toward effector CTLs in a process called tumor immunity cycle for making durable and efficient antitumor immune responses. The CD8 + T cell priming is directed essentially as a corroboration work between cells of innate immunity including dendritic cells (DCs) and natural killer (NK) cells with CD4 + T cells in adoptive immunity. Upon activation, effector CTLs infiltrate to the core or invading site of the tumor (so‐called infiltrated–inflamed [I–I] TME) and take essential roles for killing cancer cells. Exogenous reactivation and/or priming of CD8 + T cells can be possible using rational immunotherapy strategies. The increase of the ratio for costimulatory to coinhibitory mediators using immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) approach. Programmed death‐1 receptor (PD‐1)–ligand (PD‐L1) and CTL‐associated antigen 4 (CTLA‐4) are checkpoint receptors that can be targeted for relieving exhaustion of CD8 + T cells and renewing their priming, respectively, and thereby eliminating antigen‐expressing cancer cells. Due to a diverse relation between CTLs with Tregs, the Treg activity could be dampened for increasing the number and rescuing the functional potential of CTLs to induce immunosensitivity of cancer cells.

Subfields: Immunology, Oncology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/817408dfe40c771ee98ced740fd99a29545b1b6c

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Citations in the corpus

• Crosstalk between cancer-associated fibroblasts and immune cells in the tumor microenvironment: new findings and future perspectives (2021, background): “CD8 + T cells, also called CTLs, mediate cytotoxic activities mainly by inducing the apoptosis of tumor cells, which is considered the most critical component of antitumor immunity [221, 222].”