Socializing Individualized T-Cell Cancer Immunotherapy.

Abstract

Tumors typically accumulate hundreds of mutations in “driver” genes critical to transformation as well as in other “passenger” genes.1 These mutations can generate neoantigens—mutated versions of normal proteins that become recognizable by patients’ own T cells.2,3 Such T cells recovered from patients have been used as a source of tumor-hunting T-cell therapies, representing the epitome of individualized medicine as a way to treat tumors.4,5 Unfortunately, at best only a very small handful of potential neoantigens are recognized by a patient’s own T cells,6 probably because of the unrelenting immunosuppressive tactics exerted chronically on the patient’s own T-cell repertoire. Now, Stronen et al. have shown that T cells from normal, healthy donors can recognize many more neoantigens from a given patient than the patient’s own T-cell repertoire allows.7 A situation in which a greater number of neoantigens are recognized by more T cells can only be good news for the treatment of malignant tumors. These results suggest that even individualized cancer immunotherapy might benefit from reaching out into the community for extra T-cell help.