title: Subverting the adaptive immune resistance mechanism to improve clinical responses to immune checkpoint blockade therapy.
abstract: The correlation between tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL)-expression of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) and clinical responsiveness to the PD-1 blocking antibody nivolumab implicates adaptive immune evasion mechanisms in cancer. We review our findings that tumor cell PD-L1 expression is induced by interferon γ (IFNγ) producing TILs. We provide a mechanistic rationale for combining IFNγ+T helper type 1 (Th1)-inducing cancer vaccines with PD-1 immune checkpoint blockade.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery; Johns Hopkins University; School of Medicine ; Baltimore, MD USA ; Department of Oncology and the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center; Johns Hopkins University; School of Medicine ; Baltimore, MD USA.
authors.forename: Young J
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Kim
keywords: TLR agonists; adaptive immune resistance; anti-PD-1; cancer vaccine; tumor microenvironment