Cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells represent a realistic approach in cancer immunotherapy with confirmed survival benefits in the context of metastatic solid tumors. However, therapeutic effects are limited to a fraction of patients. In this study, immune-resistance elements and ideal combination therapies were explored. Initially, phenotypic analysis was performed to document CD3, CD56, NKG2D...

INTRODUCTION Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) play a major role in suppressing the immune system during the formation of the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway, which transmits an inhibitory signal to reduce T cell activity. PD-L1 is often expressed in various malignant tumors. In contrast, PD-1 is generally observed in activated lymphocytes and myeloid-derived dendr...

There is a genetic contribution to fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), but the identification of candidate genes has been elusive. Ethanol may cause FASD in part by decreasing the adhesion of the developmentally critical L1 cell adhesion molecule through interactions with an alcohol binding pocket on the extracellular domain. Pharmacologic inhibition or genetic knockdown of ERK2 did not al...

Neural cell adhesion molecule L1 is a cell surface glycoprotein required for the correct development of the nervous system. L1 exists as two isoforms encoded by mRNA species that either collectively incorporate or exclude exons 2 and 27. Neurons utilize only the full-length isoform, whereas Schwann cells, kidney cells, and blood lymphocytes only express the short form of L1. Still other cells, ...

BACKGROUND The immune escape or tolerance of cancer cells is considered to be closely involved in cancer progression. Programmed death-1 (PD-1) is an inhibitory receptor expressed on activating T cells, and several types of cancer cells were found to express PD-1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) and ligand 2 (PD-L2). METHODS In the present study, we investigated PD-L1/2 expression in papillary renal cell car...

Osteosarcoma patient survival has remained stagnant for 30 years. Novel therapeutic approaches are needed to improve outcomes. We examined the expression of Programmed Death Ligand 1 (PD-L1) and defined the tumor immune microenvironment to assess the prognostic utility in osteosarcoma. PD-L1 expression in osteosarcoma was examined in two patient cohorts using immunohistochemistry (IHC) (n = 48,...

To investigate the expression of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) and immune checkpoints and their prognostic value for resected head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC). PD-L1 expression on tumor cells (TC) and tumor-infiltrating immune cells (IC), abundance of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), and expression of the immune checkpoints were investigated in 402 HNSCC patients. PD-L1 expr...

Immunotherapy with PD-1/PD-L1-blocking antibodies is clinically effective for several tumor types, but the mechanism is not fully understood. PD-L1 expression on tumor biopsies is generally regarded as an inclusion criterion for this cancer therapy. Here, we describe the PD-L1-blocking therapeutic responses of preclinical tumors in which PD-L1 expression was removed from cancer cells, but not f...

Immunotherapy with anti-PD-1 antibody preliminarily showed promising efficacy for treating esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Herein, we used tissue microarrays and immunohistochemically analyzed PD-L1 and various tumor infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) in specimens from 196 ESCC patients who had undergone curative resection without preoperative therapy. PD-L1 expressions in tumor cells...

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is associated with an immunosuppressive tumor-microenvironment (TME) that supports the growth of tumors and mediates tumors enabling evasion of the immune system. Expression of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) and loss of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I on tumor cells are methods by which tumors escape immunosurveillance. We examined immune cel...