First Results for Agents Targeting Cancer-Related Inflammation

For the last 10 years, a dedicated cadre of researchers has been making a case for inflammation as a major cause and promoter of cancer. They have succeeded, up to a point. Cancer researchers once ignored the cells of the innate immune system that infiltrate tumors in great numbers, causing the increased local blood flow and fluid leakage that characterize inflammation. That's changed. “Nobody thinks now that they're innocent bystanders,” said Frances Balkwill, Ph.D., a cancer researcher at the Barts and The London School for Medicine and Dentistry. Acceptance of inflammation's role has led to new interventions. If inflammation is crucial for tumor survival and growth, then targeting inflammation could be effective cancer therapy, and that premise is now being tested in the clinic ( see sidebar). Results are already in for the first wave of therapies targeting inflammatory cytokines—small, potent proteins that communicate between cells. And therapies targeting chemokines, a class of cytokines that recruit immune effector cells to sites of infection or injury, are entering clinical trials. Success would elevate the role of inflammation in cancer biology and, more important, give oncologists an entirely new way to treat cancer.