Full text

Turn on search term navigation

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Galectins are a family of ß-galactoside-binding proteins that play a variety of roles in normal physiology. In cancer, their expression levels are typically elevated and often associated with poor prognosis. They are known to fuel a variety of cancer progression pathways through their glycan-binding interactions with cancer, stromal, and immune cell surfaces. Of the 15 galectins in mammals, galectin (Gal)-1, -3, and -9 are particularly notable for their critical roles in tumor immune escape. While these galectins play integral roles in promoting cancer progression, they are also instrumental in regulating the survival, differentiation, and function of anti-tumor T cells that compromise anti-tumor immunity and weaken novel immunotherapies. To this end, there has been a surge in the development of new strategies to inhibit their pro-malignancy characteristics, particularly in reversing tumor immunosuppression through galectin–glycan ligand-targeting methods. This review examines some new approaches to evading Gal-1, -3, and -9–ligand interactions to interfere with their tumor-promoting and immunoregulating activities. Whether using neutralizing antibodies, synthetic peptides, glyco-metabolic modifiers, competitive inhibitors, vaccines, gene editing, exo-glycan modification, or chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells, these methods offer new hope of synergizing their inhibitory effects with current immunotherapeutic methods and yielding highly effective, durable responses.

Details

Title
Decoding Strategies to Evade Immunoregulators Galectin-1, -3, and -9 and Their Ligands as Novel Therapeutics in Cancer Immunotherapy
Author
Lau, Lee Seng 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Mohammed, Norhan B B 2 ; Dimitroff, Charles J 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Department of Translational Medicine, Translational Glycobiology Institute at FIU, Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA 
 Department of Translational Medicine, Translational Glycobiology Institute at FIU, Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA; Department of Medical Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, South Valley University, Qena 83523, Egypt 
First page
15554
Publication year
2022
Publication date
2022
Publisher
MDPI AG
ISSN
16616596
e-ISSN
14220067
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2756737743
Copyright
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.