Understanding the Effects of Radiotherapy on the Tumour Immune Microenvironment to Identify Potential Prognostic and Predictive Biomarkers of Radiotherapy Response

摘要

Around 50% of all cancer patients receive radiotherapy as part of their treatment. Recently immunotherapy has shown promising results and become established as an effective treatment for some cancers. Combining radiotherapy and immunotherapy is a novel approach to further increase the number of patients responding to immunotherapy. Biological markers of response (biomarkers) are urgently required to hasten the clinical translation and improve outcomes further. Radiotherapy can both stimulate and inhibit the immune system and understanding the immune effects of radiotherapy on the tumour and surrounding cells may lead to the identification of predictive and prognostic biomarkers to help make more individualized treatment decisions, when combining radiotherapy with immunotherapy. This review summarizes the immune effects of radiotherapy and biomarkers of response identified to date; providing new perspectives for future research which may facilitate the development of novel radiotherapy immunotherapy combinations based on tumour immunology and biomarker identification.