cancer immunoediting

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a conceptual framework describing the dynamic, evolving relationship between cancer cells and the immune system, encompassing three distinct phases: elimination, in which the immune system successfully destroys nascent tumour cells; equilibrium, in which immune responses control but do not eliminate tumour cells, creating selection pressure for immunoresistant variants; and escape, in which cancer cells that have evolved mechanisms to evade immune detection proliferate and produce clinically detectable disease; proposed by Robert Schreiber and colleagues in the early 2000s, cancer immunoediting extended the concept of cancer immunosurveillance to acknowledge that the immune system not only eliminates tumours but paradoxically shapes them, selecting for the fittest and most immune-evasive variants; the framework has important therapeutic implications, suggesting that cancers at the escape phase have already been immunologically sculpted and that effective immunotherapy must overcome the specific evasion mechanisms these tumours have acquired