Cancer immunotherapy has now been conclusively shown to be capable of producing durable responses for a substantial number of patients. Adoptive cell transfer and checkpoint blockade therapies in particular both demonstrate that antigen-specific immune responses can be dramatically effective, even in previously refractory late stage disease. Such developments, together with advances in technology, have strongly encouraged revisiting the concept of neoantigen vaccines. Here we introduce basic ideas in the field to allow investigators from diverse backgrounds to understand these developments, grasp current issues, and contribute to further progress.

Hyperthermia is a type of medical modality for cancer treatment using the biological effect of artificially induced heat. Even though the intrinsic effects of elevated body temperature in cancer tissues are poorly understood, increasing the temperature of the body has been recognized as a popular therapeutic method for tumorous lesions as well as infectious diseases since ancient times. Recently accumulated evidence has shown that hyperthermia amplifies immune responses in the body against cancer while decreasing the immune suppression and immune escape of cancer. It also shows that hyperthermia inhibits the repair of damaged cancer cells after chemotherapy or radiotherapy. These perceptions indicate that hyperthermia has potential for cancer therapy in conjunction with immunotherapy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery. Paradoxically, the anticancer effect of hyperthermia alone has not yet been adequately exploited because deep heating techniques and devices to aggregate heat effects only in cancer tissues are difficult in practical terms. This review article focuses on the current understanding concerning cancer immunity and involvement of hyperthermia and the innate and adoptive immune system. The potential for combination therapy with hyperthermia and chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery is also discussed.

Uveal (eye) melanoma is the most common primary eye malignancy in adults. Despite optimal treatments for primary uveal melanoma, up to 50% of patients subsequently develop systemic metastasis, often in the liver. Once hepatic metastasis develops, the survival of patients is generally short and currently available treatments fail to show meaningful improvement of survival. Recent development of immune checkpoint blockades revolutionized immunotherapy for metastatic cutaneous (skin) melanoma. Unfortunately, metastatic uveal melanoma is unresponsive to this approach, thus there is an unmet need to improve the treatment of metastatic uveal melanoma. One unique characteristic of uveal melanoma is that the majority of metastases first develop in the liver. The liver is highly specialized in development of immune tolerance to food-derived antigens and consequently serves a unique function in the immune system. Understanding the mechanisms by which the liver orchestrates immune-related responses is important to the development of an effective immunotherapy for hepatic metastases such as metastatic uveal melanoma. In this review article, the authors overview the immunological aspects of the liver and discuss approaches to improve immunotherapy for metastatic uveal melanoma.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary liver cancer. Most of the time, these tumors are diagnosed at late stages. Because no effective treatments exist for patients with advanced stage HCC, there is an urgent need for novel, effective treatments. Cancer cells originate as a consequence of abnormal expression of oncogenes or loss of tumor suppressor genes. Often, neoplastic transformation results in a hyper-mutated cellular genome, which in turn produces neo-antigens from mutated genes. These tumor-specific or tumor-associated antigens can be recognized by antigen-presenting cells and trigger T-lymphocytes to elicit anticancer immunity. Immune responses to cancers are often rendered ineffective by tumor immune-editing and immune-suppressive mechanisms. Yet, therapeutic strategies to stimulate anti-cancer immunity have had remarkable success in several solid and hematological malignancies. Among the various strategies for cancer immunotherapy, cell-mediated immunotherapy holds considerable promise to overcome anergy and systemic immune suppression. This brief review will focus on cell-mediated immunotherapy for HCC.

The knowledge that the body possesses natural defenses to combat cancer existed long before the modern period, with multiple anecdotal reports of tumors miraculously disappearing, sometimes spontaneously or after a febrile or infectious episode. Spontaneous tumor regression of untreated malignant tumors is currently a well-accepted albeit rare phenomenon, and it is recognized that immunosuppression is associated with a higher cancer risk. The treatment of bladder carcinoma by intravesical administration of live attenuated Bacillus Calmette-Guérin bacteria was shown to be very effective in 1976 and is now standard treatment. Effective immunity against cancer involves complex interactions between the tumor, the host, and the environment. Cancer immunotherapy uses various strategies to augment tumor immunity and represents a paradigm shift in treating cancer, since attention has become more focused on the “biologic passport” of the individual tumor rather than the site of origin of the tumor. The different types of cancer immunotherapies discussed here include biologic modifiers, such as cytokines and vaccines, adoptive cell therapies, oncolytic viruses, and antibodies against immune checkpoint inhibitors, such as the co-inhibitory T-cell receptor PD-1 and one of its ligands, programmed death-ligand 1.

Aim: Intravesical Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is the mainstay adjuvant treatment of non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer. However, one third of the patients on BCG regimen relapse within the first year of treatment. This study aimed at identifying biomarkers to predict response to BCG treatment.

Methods: Gene expression was analyzed in blood cells of 58 patients treated with BCG through six consecutive weekly instillations and then at month 3, 6, 9, and 12. Cytokines tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-10, interferon (IFN)-γ, IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, and IL-6; chemokines CCL2, CCL3, CCL8, CXCL9, and IP-10; and mediators of cytotoxicity CTLA4, Fas-L, Perf, GNLY, NOS2A, and HMOX-1 were analyzed before the 1st and the 6th week instillation and 24 h after to assess fast (within 24 h) and prolonged changes resulting from treatment.

Results: BCG instillation led to fast-increased expression of IL-1β, TNF-α, and IL-10 genes. When compared to relapsing patients, patients with no relapses within one year showed significantly lower expression of IL-1β at 1st week and less IFN-γ, HMOX-1, and GNLY at week 6. HMOX-1 and GNLY were independent predictive biomarkers, and values above the cut-off ≥ 110 and ≥ 13.0 ‰ mRNA, respectively, were considered prejudicial factors. Patients with two HMOX-1 and GNLY factors had highest (66.7%) relapsing risk.

Conclusion: Assessing immunomodulators’ expression in blood allows the establishment of predictive cut-off values and identification of probabilities for patients’ relapses after BCG treatment.