Dan G. Duda, DMD, PhD, of the Edwin L. Steele Laboratories for Tumor Biology and Department of Radiation Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital, is the corresponding author of a paper published in Cancer Immunology Research, “Combination CXCR4 and PD1 Blockade Enhances Intratumoral Dendritic Cell Activation and Immune Responses Against Hepatocellular Carcinoma.”
How would you summarize your study for a lay audience?
Immunotherapy has revolutionized the management of cancer, including liver malignancies. However, the benefits are limited by multiple mechanisms of treatment resistance, including the lack of dendritic cells, which have a critical role in immune activity by helping to activate and guide other immune cells to fight infections or threats. Here, we report a strategy to increase the activity of dendritic cells and improve immunotherapy for liver cancer.
 What knowledge gap does your study help to fill?
Liver cancer is a disease with a poor prognosis. Despite multiple therapeutic options, including the recent emergence of immunotherapy as a first-line systemic treatment, the outcomes remain poor. Importantly, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer, is now the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and is projected to rise to the third by 2040, underscoring the urgent need for advancements in its treatment. Our previous reports have focused on the tumor microenvironment in liver cancer, including the role of CXCR4, a receptor for CXCL12, which helps weaken the immune system’s ability to fight cancer, making it easier for the tumor to grow and spread.