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Harnessing innate immunity in cancer therapy

Nature volume 574, pages 45–56 (2019)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 20 November 2019

This article has been updated

Abstract

New therapies that promote antitumour immunity have been recently developed. Most of these immunomodulatory approaches have focused on enhancing T-cell responses, either by targeting inhibitory pathways with immune checkpoint inhibitors, or by targeting activating pathways, as with chimeric antigen receptor T cells or bispecific antibodies. Although these therapies have led to unprecedented successes, only a minority of patients with cancer benefit from these treatments, highlighting the need to identify new cells and molecules that could be exploited in the next generation of immunotherapy. Given the crucial role of innate immune responses in immunity, harnessing these responses opens up new possibilities for long-lasting, multilayered tumour control.

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Fig. 1: The cancer–innate immunity cycle.
Fig. 2: The role of type I IFNs in the articulation between innate immunity and T-cell antitumour immunity.

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  • 20 November 2019

    An Amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

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Acknowledgements

The E.V. laboratory at CIML and Assistance-Publique des Hôpitaux de Marseille is supported by funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (TILC, grant agreement no. 694502), the Agence Nationale de la Recherche including the PIONEER Project (ANR-17-RHUS-0007), Equipe labellisée ‘La Ligue’ (Ligue Nationale contre le Cancer), MSDAvenir, Innate Pharma and institutional grants to the CIML (INSERM, CNRS, and Aix-Marseille University) and to Marseille Immunopole.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Innate Pharma, Marseille, France

    Olivier Demaria, Stéphanie Cornen, Yannis Morel & Eric Vivier

  2. Aix Marseille Université, INSERM, CNRS, Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, Marseille, France

    Marc Daëron & Eric Vivier

  3. Institut Pasteur, Paris, France

    Marc Daëron

  4. Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Ruslan Medzhitov

  5. Service d’Immunologie, Marseille Immunopole, Hôpital de la Timone, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille, Marseille, France

    Eric Vivier

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O.D., S.C. and E.V. prepared the first draft of the manuscript, which was then modified by all of the authors.

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Correspondence to Eric Vivier.

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O.D., S.C., Y.M. and E.V. are shareholders and employees of Innate-Pharma.

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Peer review information Nature thanks Glenn Dranoff, Nick Haining and Ira Mellman for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Table 1

Current clinical landscape of drugs targeting innate immunity. A selection of active clinical programs targeting innate immunity in cancer therapy is presented. The table is organized according to four modes of action: A) Capitalizing on antimicrobial immunity for tumor control; B) Induction and amplification of the innate immune response; C) Promotion of the effector responses of innate immunity; D) Relieving immune suppression at the tumor bed. Abbreviations: A, approved; 2019, IND planned in 2019; *see box 3; $programs stopped in phase III but still active in phase I and II trials.

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Demaria, O., Cornen, S., Daëron, M. et al. Harnessing innate immunity in cancer therapy. Nature 574, 45–56 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1593-5

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