MICROBIO 160 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Cancer Immunotherapy, Pd-L1, Immune Checkpoint

• School: UMASS-Amherst
• Department: Microbiology
• Course: MICROBIO 160
• Professor: Wilmore Welby

Document Summary

Lecture 7: the immune system and cancer (cont. ) Certain tumors regress spontaneously (e. g. , melanomas, neuroblastomas). This is the doing of the body"s immune system. immunodeficient patients. There is an increased incidence of malignancies (particularly lymphoreticular tumors ) in. Antibodies and immune t-lymphocytes have been detected in patients with tumors. The young and the very old have an increased occurrence of tumors. When t-cells are activated, you do not want it to stay activated forever, so they close down when they think there is no threat. This is when tumor/cancer cells take advantage of t cells. Therefore, a t cell needs to stay activated for it to fight off the tumor cell. After activation, t cells increase the expression of pd-1 on their surface, allowing them to receive a shut down signal. Tumor cells have taken advantage of this system by expressing binding partners of. Pd-1, programmed death-ligand (pd-l1), prematurely shutting down the t-cells.