The role of chemotherapy and operation on lymphocytes accumulation in peripheral blood obtained from patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma

NK cell based immunotherapy against oral squamous cell carcinoma

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), a major subtype of head and neck cancers, presents significant challenges due to its aggressive feature and limited therapeutic efficacy of conventional treatments. In response to these challenges, Natural Killer (NK) cells, a vital component of the innate immune system, are being explored for their therapeutic potential in OSCC due to their inherent ability to target and eliminate cancer cells without prior sensitization. This review uniquely focuses on the evolving role of NK cells specifically in OSCC, incorporating recent advancements in CAR-NK cell engineering and personalized therapy approaches that have not been comprehensively covered in previous reviews. The mechanisms through which NK cells exert cytotoxic effects on tumor cells include direct killing through the engagement of natural cytotoxic receptors and antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), making them promising agents in cancer immunotherapy. Additionally, the article explores recent advancements in engineering NK cells to enhance their antitumor activity, such as the modification with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to target specific tumor antigens. Clinical implications of NK cell-based therapies, including the challenges of integrating these treatments with existing protocols and the potential for personalized therapy, are examined. The review highlights the promise of NK cell therapies in improving outcomes for OSCC patients and outlines future directions for research in this dynamic field of oncological immunotherapy.

A Support Vector Machine Based on Liquid Immune Profiling Predicts Major Pathological Response to Chemotherapy Plus Anti-PD-1/PD-L1 as a Neoadjuvant Treatment for Patients With Resectable Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

The biomarkers for the pathological response of neoadjuvant chemotherapy plus anti-programmed cell death protein-1/programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-1/PD-L1) (CAPD) are unclear in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Two hundred and eleven patients with stage Ib-IIIa NSCLC undergoing CAPD prior to surgical resection were enrolled, and 11 immune cell subsets in peripheral blood were prospectively analyzed using multicolor flow cytometry. Immune cell subtypes were selected by recursive feature elimination and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator methods. The support vector machine (SVM) was used to build a model. Multivariate analysis for major pathological response (MPR) was also performed. Finally, five immune cell subtypes were identified and an SVM based on liquid immune profiling (LIP-SVM) was developed. The LIP-SVM model achieved high accuracies in discovery and validation sets (AUC = 0.886, 95% CI: 0.823–0.949, P < 0.001; AUC = 0.874, 95% CI: 0.791–0.958, P < 0.001, respectively). Multivariate analysis revealed that age, radiological response, and LIP-SVM were independent factors for MPR in the two sets (each P < 0.05). The integration of LIP-SVM, clinical factors, and radiological response showed significantly high accuracies for predicting MPR in discovery and validation sets (AUC = 0.951, 95% CI: 0.916–0.986, P < 0.001; AUC = 0.943, 95% CI: 0.912–0.993, P < 0.001, respectively). Based on immune cell profiling of peripheral blood, our study developed a predictive model for the MPR of patients with NSCLC undergoing CAPD treatment that can potentially guide clinical therapy.