Precision cancer medicine: novel innate immune checkpoint and methods to predict patient's response

Cancer-associated immunome is a key player in cancerprognosis and response to therapy. The cancer-associatedimmunome, particularly within the cancer microenviron-ment, is associated with cancer prognosis. The presenceand phenotype of intratumoral natural killer (NK) cells inthe cancer microenvironment is tightly associated with can-cer prognosis. NK cell activity is a balance between signalsdelivered by inhibitory and activating receptors. Major acti-vating receptors include NKG2D and the natural cytotoxic-ity receptors (NCRs): NKp46 (NCR1), NKp44 (NCR2) andNKp30 (NCR3). The issue of altered expression of activat-ing/inhibitory isoforms of immune-associated genes needswill be presented; in particular, the splicing-enabled para-doxical role of NKp44/NCR2 suggested immune check-point will be detailed with references to cancer andpregnancy. The development of drugs to control the activ-ity of the NKp44/PCNA innate immune checkpoint withinthe context of precision cancer medicine will be described.