The mechanisms on evasion of anti-tumor immune responses in gastric cancer

Abstract

The immune system and the tumor have been at each other's throats for so long that the neoplasm has learned to avoid detection and avoid being attacked, which is called immune evasion. Malignant tumors, such as gastric cancer (GC), share the ability to evade the body's immune system as a defining feature. Immune evasion includes alterations to tumor-associated antigens (TAAs), antigen presentation mechanisms (APMs), and the tumor microenvironment (TME). While TAA and APM are simpler in nature, they both involve mutations or epigenetic regulation of genes. The TME is comprised of numerous cell types, cytokines, chemokines and extracellular matrix, any one of which might be altered to have an effect on the surrounding ecosystem. The NF-kB, MAPK, PI3K/AKT, JAK/STAT, Wnt/β-catenin, Notch, Hippo and TGF-β/Smad signaling pathways are all associated with gastric cancer tumor immune evasion. In this review, we will delineate the functions of these pathways in immune evasion.

Keywords: antigen presentation; gastric cancer; immune evasion; signaling pathway; tumor associated antigen; tumormicroenvironment.