ABSTRACT
Targeting regulatory T cells and other strategies to enable cancer vaccines Christopher Paustian , Shawn M. Jensen , Sarah Church , Sachin Puri , Chris Twitty , Hong-Ming Hu , Brendan D. Curti , Walter J. Urba , Raj K. Puri , and Bernard A. Fox
INTRODUCTION Cancer vaccines are designed to initiate an effector response from patient lymphocytes that will both assist in clearing the tumor and retain memory of the disease so that disease recurrence is prevented. However, certain subsets of the very lymphocytes targeted by immunotherapies develop suppressor functions after being subverted by the patient’s tumor. These subsets include regulatory CD4 T cells, suppressor CD8 T cells, and regulatory B cells. Many current clinical trials testing cancer vaccines include concomitant treatments designed to delete, inactivate, or convert these suppressor cells so that they no longer prevent the development of a therapeutic immune response. This chapter summarizes suppressor lymphocyte subsets and their functions, the mechanisms by which they regulate immune responses, and promising strategies that might overcome these immunologic barriers.
