Application of Single-Cell Sequencing to Immunotherapy

WITHDRAWN: JUN and ATF3 are deficient in prostate cancer patients and their delivery in vivo via lipid nanoparticles has therapeutic efficacy by enhancing immune surveillance

This article has been withdrawn at the request of the author(s) and/or editor. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-withdrawal.

Immunotherapy in Genitourinary Malignancy: Evolution in Revolution or Revolution in Evolution

Immunotherapy, the 5th pillar of cancer care after surgery, radiotherapy, cytotoxic chemotherapy, and precision therapy (molecular targeted therapy), is revolutionizing the standard of care in certain patients with genitourinary malignancies. As modest clinical benefits of IL-2 for metastatic renal cell carcinoma and Bacillus Calmette-Guerin therapy for early-stage bladder cancers in the past years, immune checkpoint inhibitors therapies demonstrate meaningful survival benefit and durable clinical response in renal cell carcinoma, urothelial carcinoma, and some prostate cancer. Despite best efforts, the benefits are limited to a minority of unselected patients due to the complexities of biomarker development. Now come the next hurdles: figuring out which patients best respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors and which patients won't respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors? How best to approach immune checkpoint inhibitors therapies to extend/maximize the treatment response as long as possible? How to overcome therapeutic resistance by specific concurrent immunomodulators or targeted therapy or chemotherapy? The role of immune checkpoint inhibitors in combination or sequencing with chemotherapy or other targeted therapies or other immunomodulating therapeutics in the early disease, neoadjuvant, adjuvant, and metastatic setting is actively under exploration. Ideal strategy for cancer care is to provide not just more time, but more quality time: there remain unmet needs for novel therapies that exploit molecular or genetic pathways to extend survival without compromising health-related quality of life for patients with advanced genitourinary malignancies. Further research is needed to discover new therapeutic strategies, and validate efficacy and effectiveness in real-world settings.

Deciphering the Immune-Tumor Interplay During Early-Stage Lung Cancer Development via Single-Cell Technology

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Cancer immunotherapy has shown great success in treating advanced-stage lung cancer but has yet been used to treat early-stage lung cancer, mostly due to lack of understanding of the tumor immune microenvironment in early-stage lung cancer. The immune system could both constrain and promote tumorigenesis in a process termed immune editing that can be divided into three phases, namely, elimination, equilibrium, and escape. Current understanding of the immune response toward tumor is mainly on the "escape" phase when the tumor is clinically detectable. The detailed mechanism by which tumor progenitor lesions was modulated by the immune system during early stage of lung cancer development remains elusive. The advent of single-cell sequencing technology enables tumor immunologists to address those fundamental questions. In this perspective, we will summarize our current understanding and big gaps about the immune response during early lung tumorigenesis. We will then present the state of the art of single-cell technology and then envision how single-cell technology could be used to address those questions. Advances in the understanding of the immune response and its dynamics during malignant transformation of pre-malignant lesion will shed light on how malignant cells interact with the immune system and evolve under immune selection. Such knowledge could then contribute to the development of precision and early intervention strategies toward lung malignancy.