Immune predictors of cancer progression.

The immune system has multiple, complex, and sometimes opposing roles during cancer progression. While immune-compromised individuals have a higher incidence of cancers, inflammation is also associated with increased risk of disease progression. It is becoming apparent that simple measures of immune responses in the blood are of limited use in cancer. Instead, the importance of the exact identity and functional characteristics of tumor-infiltrating immune cells is increasingly recognized. This realization has led to recent studies that have revealed a critical role for chemokine expression in the tumor microenvironment and suggested a therapeutic potential of manipulating intratumoral expression of chemokines to alter the local immune milieu.