The duplicitous effects of interleukin 4 on tumour immunity: how can the same cytokine improve or impair control of tumour growth?

Successful tumour immunity relies on innate and adaptive immune responses, with cytokines like interleukin 4 (IL-4) known to influence tumour clearance in both positive and negative ways. Here, we summarise some of the murine tumour models used over the past two decades to assess the impact of IL-4 on tumour immunity, with emphasis on the effects of IL-4 on the tumour-induced CD8 T-cell response. These data are compared with our own recent studies showing that IL-4 impairs CD8(+) T-cell-mediated immunity against the mastocytoma cell line P815 expressing the immunogenic HLA-CW3 gene; moreover, we hypothesise that quantitative and qualitative differences in the HLA-CW3-induced CD8(+) T-cell response impair control of tumour growth and aid the development of secondary tumours. We conclude that the duplicitous effects of IL-4 on tumour immunity depend on the type of effector cell (adaptive/innate) mediating tumour clearance and whether tumour growth depends on stromal infrastructure. Thus, the search for factors that improve or weaken the effectiveness of tumour-specific T cells has to be continued to improve modern approaches of immunotherapy against cancer.