Pyroptosis, a new bridge to tumor immunity.

Pyroptosis refers to the process of gasdermin (GSDM)-mediated programmed cell death (PCD) and our understanding of pyroptosis has expanded beyond the cells and is known to involve extracellular responses. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in pyroptosis due to its emerging role in activating the immune system. In the meantime, pyroptosis-mediated therapies, which use the immune response to kill cancer cells, have also achieved notable success in a clinical setting. In this review, we discuss that the immune response induced by pyroptosis activation is a double-edged sword that affects all stages of tumorigenesis. On the one hand, the activation of inflammasome-mediated pyroptosis and the release of pyroptosis-produced cytokines alter the immune microenvironment and promote the development of tumors by evading immune surveillance. On the other hand, pyroptosis-produced cytokines can also collect immune cells and ignite the immune system to improve the efficiency of tumor immunotherapies. Pyroptosis is also closely with several immune checkpoints, especially programmed death-1 (PD-1) or programmed death- ligand 1 (PD-L1). In this review, we mainly focused on our current understanding of the interplay between the immune system and tumors that process through pyroptosis and debate about their use as potential therapeutic targets. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.