More insights into the immunosuppressive potential of tumor exosomes
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BioMed Central
Open Access
Editorial
More insights into the immunosuppressive potential of tumor exosomes Veronica Huber1, Paola Filipazzi1, Manuela Iero1, Stefano Fais2 and Licia Rivoltini*1 Address: 1Unit of Immunotherapy of Human Tumors, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale Tumori, Milan, Italy and 2Department of Drug Research and Evaluation, Anti-Tumor Drugs Section, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy Email: Veronica Huber - [email protected]; Paola Filipazzi - [email protected]; Manuela Iero - [email protected]; Stefano Fais - [email protected]; Licia Rivoltini* - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 30 October 2008 Journal of Translational Medicine 2008, 6:63
doi:10.1186/1479-5876-6-63
Received: 24 October 2008 Accepted: 30 October 2008
This article is available from: http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/6/1/63 © 2008 Huber et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
We did read with great interest the recent review published by Ichim et al on the potential role of tumor exosomes as immune escape mechanism [1], and we were pleased to see that the authors shared our original idea that these organelles may represent a crucial tool of immunosuppression in cancer [2,3]. Indeed, although tumor cells are well acknowledged to affect immune functions through the release of diverse soluble factors or cellto-cell contact mediated mechanisms [4,5], the involvement of alternative pathways based on the secretion of membrane microvesicles has been so far largely unappreciated [6]. Exosomes are endosome-derived organelles of 50–100 nm size, actively secreted by virtually all cell types through an exocytosis pathway that is used under normal as well as pathological conditions [6]. Their first description can be attributed to the biochemist Rose Johnstone, who reported in her 1980s investigations about these lipid-encased particles produced as a mechanism for shedding of specific membrane functions during reticulocyte maturation [7]. Since then, these curious microvesicles lingered in obscurity, although several reports kept referring to exosomes as potential pathway utilized by different cell types to eliminate cellular material or establish intercellular cross-talk [8]. Finally in 1996 these microparticles were recognized for their central role in antigen presentation with the work of Graça Raposo and Hans Geuze of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who reported that exosomes secreted by B cells could promote T cell cross-priming through the expression of HLA/peptide complexes [6]. Based on these and following observations
about the role of exosomes in antigen presentation, the exacerbated production of these vesicles by tumor cells was initially we
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