Radiation Oncology/Cytokine therapy

  • Cytokine therapies are designed to alter immune homeostasis with the tumor and provoke or disinhibit immune effectors
  • Often associated with severe dose-limiting toxicities that are manageable with appropriate dosing and are now better understood to induce immune-suppressive humoral factors, suppressive cells, and cellular checkpoints, without consistently inducing a tumor-specific response
  • Cytokines are being investigated clinically with new engineered cytokine mutants (superkines), chimeric antibody-cytokine fusion proteins (immunokines), anticancer vaccines, CPIs, and cancer-directed monoclonal antibodies to increase their antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity or sustain cellular responses and anticancer efficacy
  • Michele Ardolino et al. Oncotarget. 2015 Aug 14; 6(23): 19346–19347. Cytokine treatment in cancer immunotherapy (PMID: 26305981)
  • Kevin C Conlon et al. J Interferon Cytokine Res. 2019 Jan. Cytokines in the Treatment of Cancer (PMID: 29889594)