April 15 Clinical Cancer Research Highlights

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Selected Articles from the April 15, 2008 Issue

The articles referenced in this Highlights section will be available online in HTML and PDF formats to all interested users at no charge until the next issue of Clinical Cancer Research is published. Click on the article title to view the complete article.

View the Table of Contents for the April 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research.

An Immunoregulatory Enzyme Implicated in Endometrial Cancer

Tumor escape from host immune surveillance is a crucial mechanism for cancer pro­gression, and an immuno­regulatory enzyme called indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) contributes to this tolerance mechanism in mice. To investigate the role of IDO in human cancer, Ino and colleagues studied the relationship between the level of IDO expression in tumors and the numbers of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes or natural killer cells. They found that increased tumoral IDO expression correlated with a reduced number of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and natural killer cells. Further, increased tumoral IDO expression was associated with disease progression and reduced patient survival. These findings suggest that targeting IDO to restore host antitumor immunity may be a therapeutic strategy for endometrial cancer. 

Prognostic Value of Vascularization in Breast Cancer

Predicting Broad Spectrum Drug Resistance of Tumors

The infiltration of T cells into a tumor is associated with a good prognosis in some types of cancer. Here, Ladoire and colleagues found that the antitumor effect of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer is partly mediated by the immune system. Using immunohistochemistry, they studied the tumor bed immune infiltrate before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in 56 breast cancer patients. They found that an infiltrate enriched in cytotoxic T lymphocytes but depleted in suppressor cells after treatment is associated with complete tumor response to chemotherapy. This study highlights a role for the immune system in breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy and suggests that T cell infiltration may be taken in account to determine the prognosis of patients.