Sixty shades of oxygen—an attractive opportunity for cancer immunotherapy

Tumors evade the cytotoxic activity of T lymphocytes by secreting adenosine in the extracellular matrix which limits the infiltration and activation of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs), and this process is strongly fostered by the hypoxic microenvironment that characterizes most of the cancer types. A paper recently published in Science Translational Medicine by Hatfield et al. found that respiratory hyperoxygenation can promote tumor regression in preclinical models of cancer by re-activating the antitumoral function of CTLs and natural killer (NK) cells.