Endocrine-related cancers are commonly diagnosed worldwide and are a major cause of cancer-related deaths. While current therapies are effective at earlier stages, they often fail in more advanced or recurring tumors due to the development of primary and secondary resistance. Therefore, new therapeutic approaches are urgently needed. In recent years, new therapeutic avenues, namely immunotherapy and epigenetic modulation, have been successfully explored in multiple cancer types. However, this success has not been observed in endocrine-related cancers. These tumors are considered immunologically cold, characterized by a low immunogenicity, scarce infiltration by immune cells, and highly immunosuppressive environment rendering them resistant to immunotherapy. Recent studies demonstrated the ability of epigenetic agents to simultaneously alter the behavior of tumor and immune cells, giving premise to combination approaches using epigenetic modulation to prime cancer for immunotherapy. This review provides an overview of the immune landscape of endocrine-related cancers and its main epigenetic regulators. We discuss current clinical trials investigating the effect of combination endocrine-related immunotherapy and their challenges to successfully treat endocrine-related cancers.
内分泌相关癌症在全球范围内普遍被诊断，是导致癌症相关死亡的主要原因。尽管现有疗法在早期阶段有效，但由于原发性和继发性耐药性的发展，这些疗法在更晚期或复发性肿瘤中往往失效。因此，迫切需要新的治疗方法。近年来，免疫疗法和表观遗传调控等新治疗途径已在多种癌症类型中成功探索。然而，这一成功尚未在内分泌相关癌症中观察到。这些肿瘤被认为是免疫学上的“冷肿瘤”，其特征是免疫原性低、免疫细胞浸润稀少以及高度免疫抑制环境，使其对免疫疗法产生抵抗。最近的研究表明，表观遗传药物能够同时改变肿瘤细胞和免疫细胞的行为，为利用表观遗传调控使癌症对免疫疗法敏感提供了联合治疗的前提。本综述概述了内分泌相关癌症的免疫环境及其主要表观遗传调控因子，并讨论了当前研究内分泌相关免疫联合疗法效果的临床试验及其在成功治疗内分泌相关癌症方面面临的挑战。
Epigenetic Regulation of Immune Responses in Endocrine-Related Cancers and Its Role in Immunotherapy
肿瘤(癌症)患者之家