Galectin-1 and immunotherapy for brain cancer

Abstract

The prognosis of patients diagnosed with high-grade glioma continues to be dismal in spite of multimodal treatment. Active specific immunotherapy by means of dendritic cell vaccination is considered to be a new promising concept that aims at generating an anti-tumoral immune response. However, it is now widely accepted that the success of immunotherapeutic strategies to promote tumor regression will rely not only on enhancing the effector arm of the immune response but also on downregulation of the counteracting tolerogenic signals. In this article, we summarize evidence that galectin-1, an evolutionarily conserved glycan-binding protein that is abundantly expressed in high-grade glioma, is an important player in glioma-mediated immune escape.

Keywords::

• brain cancer
• dendritic-cell mediated immunotherapy
• galectin-1
• high-grade glioma
• immune privilege

Financial & competing interests disclosure

Tina Verschuere is a research fellow supported by the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT). Steven De Vleeschouwer is supported by the Klinisch Onderzoeksfonds UZ Leuven. Stefaan Van Gool is senior clinical investigator at the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO-V). Florence Lefranc is a clinician fellow half-time and Robert Kiss a director of research with the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS). This work is performed at the Immunotherapy Platform Leuven (www.itpl.be) in collaboration with the Laboratory of Toxicology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Free University of Brussels, Belgium. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.