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EDITORIAL article

Front. Oncol., 16 June 2023
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
This article is part of the Research Topic Hallmark of Cancer: Avoiding Immune Suppression View all 11 articles

Editorial: Hallmark of cancer: avoiding immune suppression

  • 1Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia
  • 2S.S.D. Rare Tumors and Melanoma, IRCCS Istituto Tumori “Giovanni Paolo II”, Bari, Italy
  • 3Department of Microbiology and Biochemical Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China
  • 4Department of Neurosurgery, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States
  • 5Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, United States

Immunosuppression remains a dominating force in the refractory nature of most malignancies. Unlocking immunotherapeutic efficacy requires a more detailed understanding of the cancer ecosystem, including neovascularization, hypoxia patterns, tumor metabolomics, stromal architecture and immunobiology. This understanding is critical to making more informed decisions regarding evolutionary biology, cancer cell senescence, and the tumor immune microenvironment and may be used to predict treatment strategies. In this Research Topic, papers are collated that focus on cancer-mediated immunosuppression as a hallmark. The review by Santiago-Sanchez et al. highlights the myriad of mechanisms and pathways implicated in cancer-mediated immunosuppression. The scope of work in the collection ranges from imaging and radiogenomics in ovarian cancer, to long-noncoding RNA prediction in hepatocellular carcinoma, and glucose metabolism and response to anti-PD-1 therapy in papillary thyroid cancer. Additional articles for this hallmark pertain to hypoxia and machine learning in lung adenocarcinoma, alternative splicing in bladder cancer while others focus on specific molecules of interest including SIGLEC15 in thyroid cancer, TIGIT expression in solid tumors, pyroptosis gene TP63 in osteosarcoma and HSP90 expression in lymphoma to inform immunotherapeutic application. As newer immunotherapy approaches continue to be developed, so must our understanding of the immune landscape across malignancies to inform rationale predictions and treatment modalities. The papers herein reflect a breadth of tools that could be used to make informed decisions in distinct cancer subsets. With the boom of artificial intelligence and public repositories harboring genomic and transcriptome data sets, it is conceivable that more accurate predictions regarding individual cancer biology will be made to inform treatment. The degree, scope and cell types involved in immunosuppression must be better delineated for cancer immunotherapy to meet its promise. The work herein helps add to the growing chorus of tools that will allow for more informed decisions regarding individual cancer immunobiology and provide renewed hope that immunotherapy may be leveraged as an adaptable tool for patients based on their biology for more personalized intervention.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest

ES discloses having patent applications on immunotherapeutic technologies many of which are optioned to commercial license.

The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The handling editor SK declared a shared affiliation with the author ES at the time of review.

Publisher’s note

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.

Keywords: immunosuppression, metabolomics, tumor microenvironment, cancer immunotherapy, prediction

Citation: Alenzi FQB, Apollonio B, Peng L, Sayour EJ and Sheffer M (2023) Editorial: Hallmark of cancer: avoiding immune suppression. Front. Oncol. 13:1211456. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2023.1211456

Received: 24 April 2023; Accepted: 22 May 2023;
Published: 16 June 2023.

Edited and Reviewed by:

Sergei Kusmartsev, Department of Urology, University of Florida, United States

Copyright © 2023 Alenzi, Apollonio, Peng, Sayour and Sheffer. 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) and the copyright owner(s) 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: Elias J. Sayour, ZWxpYXMuc2F5b3VyQG5ldXJvc3VyZ2VyeS51ZmwuZWR1

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.