“This paper represents the first demonstration that antigen-specific regulatory T cells exist at tumor sites.”

T-cell based Immunotherapy of cancer represents one of the most promising approaches to the cancer treatment, but so far only limited success has been achieved in a clinical environment. This paper discovered that tumor-specific regulatory T cells are recruited and activated at tumor sites. These regulatory T cells suppress immune responses, thus inducing antigen-specific, local immune tolerance at tumor sites. This will explain, at least in part, why peptide- or DC/peptide-based immunotherapy elicits weak and transient immune responses. This paper represents the first demonstration that antigen-specific regulatory T cells exist at tumor sites.

This represents a truly new discovery that's quite useful to others. For example, one should be able to identify natural ligands recognized by regulatory T cells in autoimmune and infectious diseases using a similar approach as described in our immunity paper. These natural ligands may be useful in the activation and expansion of antigen-specific regulatory T cells in autoimmune diseases, thus leading to prevention or treatment of autoimmune diseases.

The significance of the paper is that it will allow us to design new strategies for reversing the suppressive function of regulatory T cells and lead to the production of a strong antitumor immunity.

I have been working on CD4(+) T cells and cancer vaccines for many years.