Cancer Core Europe’s Education & Training pillar celebrated its fifth 2023 lecture on systemic immunity, hosted by the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori (INT). On this occasion, Licia Rivoltino, a medical oncologist specializing in immunology, shared with the attendees her lecture, “Systemic immune profiling in cancer patients: prognosis and treatment.” The lecture, which took place via Zoom, was attended by over 140 clinicians, researchers, PhDs, postdocs, and staff from Cancer Core Europe centres.
Systemic immunity, a major area of research
Cancer is a systemic disease that is caused by chronic inflammation. This illness itself causes numerous functional and compositional changes in the immune system. Interactions between different cell lineages throughout tissues control immunity. As a result, a better knowledge of tumor immunology must consider the systemic immune landscape outside of the tumor microenvironment (TME). The local tissue environment determines whether this long inflammatory state is involved in cancerogenesis or tumor development. Nonetheless, the overall immunological landscape is altered in cancer patients, which may influence disease genesis and progression.
To date, the majority of tumor immunology research has concentrated on the tumor microenvironment. Immunity, on the other hand, is a systemic process that is coordinated across tissues and governed by a global homeostatic balance that influences immune responses at the tumor site. Indeed, during cancer-associated emergency myelopoiesis, most myeloid cells, which are the primary mediators of inflammation, are constantly transported from the bone marrow to the blood.
T and B lymphocytes, which are essential mediators of the anticancer immune response, require lymphoid organ activation in order to travel through the blood to the tumor and exert their protective activities. As a result, local antitumor immune responses are entirely dependent on constant cross-talk with the periphery.
“Systemic immunity is becoming an intense area of research due to the availability of blood samples and the identification of novel biomarkers and modulating pathways that may help improve immune-mediated cancer control and exploit immunity in cancer prevention and cure”
Licia Rivoltino
Pioneering Work in Translational Immunology
Licia has wide experience in translational immunology, having been Head of the Translational Immunology Unit at the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, since 2007. Her unit focuses on dissecting systemic immunity in cancer patients to define novel predictive and prognostic biomarkers, the mechanisms underlying peripheral immune dysfunctions, and the potential interventions to restore immunosurveillance in a cancer clinical setting.
Thank you to all attendees, to Licia, the INT team, and CCE’s Education &Training pillar for making this lecture a great one.
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About CCE Lecture Series
The CCE Lecture series is a CCE-internal event, which educates and informs about state-of-the-art research within the seven centres and is aimed to increase awareness among partners about each other’s activities and potential for collaboration.
The CCE Lecture Series will have its last 2023 presentation on December 15 with Suzette Delaloge, a medical oncologist and researcher specialized in breast cancer and cancer prevention from Gustave Roussy, as speaker. During the session, she will introduce us to Towards Building Risk-Based Cancer Interception.
About Cancer Core Europe (CCE)
Cancer Core Europe is a consortium of seven leading cancer centres (www.cancercoreeurope.eu). CCEs members are driven by a strong will to reshape the cancer research model to ultimately increase the European Union’s competitiveness as a place to conduct cutting-edge research that’s translated to the clinic to deliver more personalized medicine.
