Mechanisms of Immunosuppressive Tumor Evasion: Focus on Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a malignancy with high heterogeneity in its biological features and treatments. Although the overall survival (OS) of patients with ALL has recently improved considerably, owing to the application of conventional chemo-therapeutic agents, approximately 20% of the pediatric cases and 40-50% of the adult patients relapse during and after the treatment period. The potential mechanisms that cause relapse involve clonal evolution, innate and acquired chemoresistance, and the ability of ALL cells to escape the immune-suppressive tumor response. Currently, immunotherapy in combination with conventional treatment is used to enhance the immune response against tumor cells, thereby significantly improving the OS in patients with ALL. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms of immune evasion by leukemia cells could be useful for developing novel therapeutic strategies.

Automated summary

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a malignancy characterized by high heterogeneity in its biological features and treatment responses. Despite significant improvements in overall survival (OS) with conventional chemotherapy, relapse rates remain high due to mechanisms such as clonal evolution, chemoresistance, and immune evasion by ALL cells. Immunotherapy in combination with traditional treatments has shown promise in improving OS for ALL patients, highlighting the importance of understanding immune evasion mechanisms in developing novel therapeutic strategies.