The therapeutic success of immunotherapy requires specific alterations of the tumor microenvironment and/or the inhibition of tumor-elicited immunosuppression. Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) are a major component of the tumor microenvironment. We have recently shown that modulating TAMs dramatically augments the efficacy of immunotherapy. TAM-activating agents should hence be considered as...

The safety of accelerated schedules of allergen immunotherapy (ASAI) in patients with bronchial asthma (BA) has been reported but there are little data on the safety of ASAI for patients with atopic dermatitis (AD). In this study, we investigated the safety of ASAI in patients with AD. Sixty patients with AD and 18 patients with BA sensitized to house dust mites (HDM) were studied. A maximum ma...

BACKGROUND Allergen specific immunotherapy is the only causal therapy for respiratory allergies, and the only treatment that can modify the natural course of the disease. Information and education of patients is essential to successful treatment and, since the General Practitioner is the primary referral, a cooperation between him and the allergy specialists is crucial. We carried out a survey ...

UNLABELLED CD66b is a member of the carcinoembryonic antigen family, which mediates the adhesion between neutrophils and to endothelial cells. Allergen-specific immunotherapy is widely used to treat allergic diseases, and the molecular mechanisms underlying this therapy are poorly understood. The present work was undertaken to analyze A) the in vitro effect of allergens and immunotherapy on cel...

It has been two years since clinical development of cancer immunotherapy has started to turn from decades of failures to its first successes in randomized Phase 3 trials with Sipuleucel-T, a dendritic cellbased vaccine, and ipilimumab, a monoclonal antibody targeting CTLA-4. Both are increasing patient survival in their target diseases. The path to these successes was, in part, paved by the met...

Immunotherapy is the new trend in cancer treatment due to the selectivity, long lasting effects, and demonstrated improved overall survival and tolerance, when compared to patients treated with conventional chemotherapy. Despite these positive results, immunotherapy is still far from becoming the perfect magic bullet to fight cancer, largely due to the facts that immunotherapy is not effective ...

Primary malignant melanoma of the esophagus (PMME) is a very rare disease with an extremely poor prognosis. Surgery is currently considered its best treatment, while any other measures are ineffective. We studied the effect of active specific immunotherapy using monocyte-derived dendritic cells (DCs) pulsed with the epitope peptides of melanoma-associated antigens (MAGE-1, MAGE-3) in patients w...

The combined-immunotherapy of adoptive cell therapy (ACT) and cyclophosphamide (CTX) is one of the most efficient treatments for melanoma patients. However, no synergistic effects of CTX and ACT on the spatio-temporal dynamics of immunocytes in vivo have been described. Here, we visualized key cell events in immunotherapy-elicited immunoreactions in a multicolor-coded tumor microenvironment, an...

Understanding how murine models can elucidate the mechanisms underlying antitumor immune responses and advance immune-based drug development is essential to advancing the field of cancer immunotherapy. The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) convened a workshop titled, "Challenges, Insights, and Future Directions for Mouse and Humanized Models in Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy" as p...

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) suppress exuberant immune system activation and promote immunologic tolerance. Because Tregs modulate both innate and adaptive immunity, the biomedical community has developed an intense interest in using Tregs for immunotherapy. Conditions that require clinical tolerance to improve outcomes - autoimmune disease, solid organ transplantation, and hematopoietic stem cel...