IL-2-driven CD8+ T cell phenotypes: implications for immunotherapy

Veronika Niederlova1, Oksana Tsyklauri1, Marek Kovar2

  • 1Laboratory of Adaptive Immunity, Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic.

Trends in Immunology
|October 12, 2023
PubMed

The therapeutic potential of interleukin (IL)-2 in cancer treatment has been known for decades, yet its widespread adoption in clinical practice remains limited. Recently, chimeric proteins of an anti-PD-1 antibody and suboptimal IL-2 variants were shown to stimulate potent antitumor and antiviral immunity by inducing unique effector CD8+ T cells in mice. A similar subset of cytotoxic T cells is induced by depletion of regulatory T cells (Tregs), suggesting IL-2 sequestration as a major mechanism through which regulatory T cells suppress activated CD8+ T cells. Here, we present our view of how IL-2-based biologicals can boost the antitumor response at a cellular level, and propose that the role of Tregs following such treatments may have been previously overestimated.

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