Uveal (eye) melanoma is the most common primary eye malignancy in adults. Despite optimal treatments for primary uveal melanoma, up to 50% of patients subsequently develop systemic metastasis, often in the liver. Once hepatic metastasis develops, the survival of patients is generally short and currently available treatments fail to show meaningful improvement of survival. Recent development of immune checkpoint blockades revolutionized immunotherapy for metastatic cutaneous (skin) melanoma. Unfortunately,metastatic uveal melanoma is unresponsive to this approach, thus there is an unmet need to improve the treatment of metastatic uveal melanoma. One unique characteristic of uveal melanoma is that the majority of metastases first develop in the liver. The liver is highly specialized in development of immune tolerance to food-derived antigens and consequently serves a unique function in the immune system. Understanding the mechanisms by which the liver orchestrates immune-related responses is important to the development of an effective immunotherapy for hepatic metastases such as metastatic uveal melanoma. In this review article, the authors overview the immunological aspects of the liver and discuss approaches to improve immunotherapy for metastatic uveal melanoma.
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