Sympathetic improvement of cancer vaccine efficacy

Abstract

The link between stress, other psychological factors and response to cancer, or even the cancer incidence and metastasis, is well established. The inhibition of β-Adrenergic receptors (β-AR) using β-blockers was demonstrated to have an inhibitory effect on cancer recurrence. Direct effects on the stress-induced suppression of anti-tumor immune responses were also shown. In a recent issue of Cancer Immunology Research, Daher and colleagues studied the molecular mechanism behind this protective effect in the context of cancer vaccination. They provided evidence that the β-AR signaling affected the priming of naïve CD8 + T cells in their myeloma model, rather than effector CD8 + T cells which downregulated the expression of β-AR after activation and became insensitive to such signaling. Blocking the β-adrenergic signaling during vaccination led to increased expansion and effector functions of antigen-specific CD8 + T cells and reduced tumor growth. This has implications for the clinical use of β-blockers as adjuvants to enhance cancer vaccination and other types of immunotherapy.