Immune signatures of murine and human cancers reveal unique mechanisms of tumor escape and new targets for cancer immunotherapy.

Purpose: Despite lymphocyte infiltration of tumors and the activation of tumor-draining lymph nodes, malignant tumors are able to "escape" from both innate and adaptive immune responses. For immunotherapy to be successful, it must reverse these escape mechanisms, which necessitates explicit and tumor-specific elucidation of tumor escape strategies.

Research Design: To identify relevant escape mechanisms in murine tumors and in two corresponding human cancers, real-time reverse transcription-PCR was used to measure a panel of genes associated with T-cell activation and inhibition pathways.