REVIEW article

Front. Immunol.

Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1593960

This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Benign Surgery: Techniques, Outcomes, and Educational InnovationsView all 5 articles

Benign tumors broaden the field of application for immunotherapy

Provisionally accepted
Mohamed Adel YoussefMohamed Adel Youssef1*Hisham Al-SharifHisham Al-Sharif2Brian Thomas McGrathBrian Thomas McGrath3Maria M PickenMaria M Picken4Isabelle Caroline Le PooleIsabelle Caroline Le Poole5*
  • 1Department of Internal Medicine, John Sealy School of Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Galveston, United States
  • 2Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States
  • 3Departments of Dermatology, Microbiology and Immunology, Northwestern University, Chicago, United States
  • 4Department of Pathology, Stritch School of Medicine, Loyola University Chicago, Maywood, IL, United States
  • 5Departments of Dermatology, Microbiology and Immunology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States

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Immunotherapy has shown significant potential for treating malignancies. Not yet widely considered is the opportunity to employ immunotherapy for the treatment of benign tumors. By focusing on targetable antigens expressed following specific genetic changes associated with individual benign tumors, immunotherapy may provide an effective approach to benign tumor treatment, circumventing the need for more conventional surgery. Immunotherapies can specifically recognize and target tumor cells, which could be especially beneficial for benign tumors given the extended timeframe available for treatment. Thus, benign tumors, offering a greater window of opportunity for treatment and a relatively stable phenotype associated with a limited mutation burden, can derive great benefit from immunotherapeutic approaches targeting antigens uniquely associated with each condition.

Keywords: Benign tumors, mutations, Antigens, Immunotherapy, Checkpoint inhibitors, tumor vaccines, Adoptive T Cell Therapy

Received: 15 Mar 2025; Accepted: 03 Jun 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Youssef, Al-Sharif, McGrath, Picken and Le Poole. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Mohamed Adel Youssef, Department of Internal Medicine, John Sealy School of Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Galveston, United States
Isabelle Caroline Le Poole, Departments of Dermatology, Microbiology and Immunology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material