The Trap in the Microenvironment: Why TAMs are the Real Drivers of T-Cell Exhaustion

Macrophages in the tumor microenvironment (TAMs) lead to a bad prognosis of cancer patients. But why?

In a recent paper in Immunity, Peter Fecci and colleagues at Duke University School of Medicine report that Tcells recognizing HLA presented peptides on TAMs not on tumor cells are pushed towards terminal exhaustion loosing te capacity to killing tumor cells.

Seems we urgently need to better understand which HLA-peptides are presented by TAMs in the tumor microenvironment by highly sensitive immunopeptidomics and treat patients that feature high levels of TAMs with therapy that can kill these cells. Would you agree?

precisionmedicine cancer cellandgenetherapy immunotherapy

Antigen presentation by tumor-associated macrophages drives T cells from a progenitor exhaustion state to terminal exhaustion