The Effects of Obesity on Anti-Cancer Immunity and Cancer Immunotherapy

Cancer is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Traditional treatments include surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and more recently targeted therapies including immunotherapy are becoming routine care for some cancers. Immunotherapy aims to upregulate the patient&...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cancers 2020-05, Vol.12 (5), p.1230
Main Authors: Woodall, Matthew J, Neumann, Silke, Campbell, Katrin, Pattison, Sharon T, Young, Sarah L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adipocytes
Antigens
Apoptosis
Body mass index
Bone marrow
Breast cancer
Cancer
Cancer immunotherapy
Cancer therapies
Chemotherapy
CTLA-4 protein
Cytokines
Immune checkpoint
Immune system
Immunotherapy
Inflammation
Insulin resistance
Lipids
Lymphatic system
Medical research
Metabolic disorders
Metabolism
Morbidity
Mortality
Obesity
Patients
PD-1 protein
PD-L1 protein
Radiation therapy
Review
Surgery
Tumor necrosis factor-TNF
Tumors
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Summary:Cancer is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Traditional treatments include surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and more recently targeted therapies including immunotherapy are becoming routine care for some cancers. Immunotherapy aims to upregulate the patient's own immune system, enabling it to destroy cancerous cells. Obesity is a metabolic disorder characterized by significant weight that is an important contributor to many different diseases, including cancers. Obesity impacts the immune system and causes, among other things, a state of chronic low-grade inflammation. This is hypothesized to impact the efficacy of the immunotherapies. This review discusses the effects of obesity on the immune system and cancer immunotherapy, including the current evidence on the effect of obesity on immune checkpoint blockade, something which currently published reviews on this topic have not delved into. Data from several studies show that even though obesity causes a state of chronic low-grade inflammation with reductions in effector immune populations, it has a beneficial effect on patient survival following anti-PD-1/PD-L1 and anti-CTLA-4 treatment. However, research in this field is just emerging and further work is needed to expand our understanding of which cancer patients are likely to benefit from immunotherapy.
ISSN:2072-6694
2072-6694
DOI:10.3390/cancers12051230