Panayotis Verginis and colleagues recently published a paper in Cell

Understanding the mechanisms that tumors utilize to escape immune system recognition set the stage for development of novel immunotherapeutic strategies which revolutionized cancer therapy. Despite the success, a significant proportion of patients do not respond or develop life-threatening toxicities. Thus, it is of urgent need to uncover immune pathways that promote tumor growth in order to design more effective therapeutic protocols. A study published at Cell, co-led by Verginis group, demonstrate that “training” of the innate immune system poses potent anti-tumor properties through re-programming of granulocytes. Importantly, the anti-tumor effects of “trained” granulopoiesis are initiated by the long-lived bone marrow progenitors through a transcriptomic and epigenetic rewiring. These findings clearly suggest that the trained immunity mediated reprogramming of granulopoiesis represents a promising avenue for neutralizing the hijacking of innate immunity by cancer and can be exploited as an adjuvant tumor immunotherapy.

Innate Immune Training of Granulopoiesis Promotes Anti-tumor Activity
Kalafati L, Kourtzelis I, Schulte-Schrepping J, Li X, Hatzioannou A, Grinenko T, Hagag E, Sinha A, Has C, Dietz S, de Jesus Domingues AM, Nati M, Sormendi S, Neuwirth A, Chatzigeorgiou A, Ziogas A, Lesche M, Dahl A, Henry I, Subramanian P, Wielockx B, Murray P, Mirtschink P, Chung KJ, Schultze JL, Netea MG, Hajishengallis G, Verginis P, Mitroulis I, Chavakis T. Cell. 2020 Oct 29;183(3):771-785.e12. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.09.058.

pubmed