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Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Co-Culture In Vitro Systems to Reproduce the Cancer-Immunity Cycle
Published on: June 7, 2024
Cancer immunoediting: integrating immunity's roles in cancer suppression and promotion
Robert D Schreiber1, Lloyd J Old, Mark J Smyth
1Department of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA. schreiber@immunology.wustl.edu
Abstract:
Understanding how the immune system affects cancer development and progression has been one of the most challenging questions in immunology. Research over the past two decades has helped explain why the answer to this question has evaded us for so long. We now appreciate that the immune system plays a dual role in cancer: It can not only suppress tumor growth by destroying cancer cells or inhibiting their outgrowth but also promote tumor progression either by selecting for tumor cells that are more fit to survive in an immunocompetent host or by establishing conditions within the tumor microenvironment that facilitate tumor outgrowth. Here, we discuss a unifying conceptual framework called "cancer immunoediting," which integrates the immune system's dual host-protective and tumor-promoting roles.
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