Not so Fas: Re-evaluating the mechanisms of immune privilege and tumor escape

What is immune privilege (not)?

The 'immune privilege' of the central nervous system (CNS) is indispensable for damage limitation during inflammation in a sensitive organ with poor regenerative capacity. It is a longstanding notion which, over time, has acquired several misconceptions and a lack of precision in its definition. In this article, we address these issues and re-define CNS immune privilege in the light of recent d...

Expression of Fas (CD95/APO-1) ligand by human breast cancers: significance for tumor immune privilege.

Breast cancers have been shown to elicit tumor-specific immune responses. As in other types of cancer, the antitumor immune response fails to contain breast tumor growth, and a reduction in both the quantity and cytotoxic effectiveness of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) is associated with a poorer prognosis. Fas ligand (FasL) induces apoptotic death of activated lymphocytes that express i...

Immune Privilege of the Testis: Meaning, Mechanisms, and Manifestations

The mammalian testis belongs among a small number of tissues that can unambiguously be called “immunologically privileged,” as demonstrated by the ability to tolerate not only testicular autoantigens but also alloand xenoantigens experimentally located within the testis environment. The mechanisms underlying this privilege remain poorly understood compared with more intensively studied models o...

Role of Fas ligand (CD95L) in immune escape: the tumor cell strikes back.

Several different tumor types have recently been shown to express functional Fas ligand (FasL), which may represent an additional mechanism of tumor escape. However, the in vivo significance of these findings in the context of potent adversaries such as activated CTL or NK cells remains to be fully established. The potential interactions between tumor cells and the host immune response are thus...

Immune escape mechanisms in ALCL.