Inflammation and cancer: organ-specific regulation of cancer development

Lisa M Coussens

Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California San Francisco (UCSF), USA

The concept that leukocytes are components of malignant tumours is not new; however, their functional involvement as promoting forces for tumour progression has only recently been appreciated. We are interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms that regulate leukocyte recruitment into neoplastic tissue and subsequent regulation those leukocytes exert on evolving cancer cells.

By studying transgenic mouse models of skin, lung and breast cancer development, we have recently appreciated that adaptive leukocytes differentially regulate myeloid cell recruitment, activation, and behaviour, by organ-dependent mechanisms. Thus, whereas chronic inflammation of premalignant skin neoplasms is B cell–dependent, during mammary carcinogenesis, T cells appear to play more of a dominant role in regulating pro-tumour and pro-metastatic properties of myeloid cells.

To be presented will be recent insights into organ and tissue-specific regulation of epithelial cancer development by adaptive and innate immune cells, and thoughts on how these properties can be harnessed for effective anticancer therapeutics.