Primary
liver cancer is a common kind of digestive
cancers with high
malignancy, causing 745,500 deaths each year.
Hepatocellular carcinoma is the major pathological type of primary
liver cancer. Traditional treatment methods for patients with
hepatocellular carcinoma have shown poor efficacy in killing
residual cancer cells for a long time. In recent years,
tumor immunotherapy has emerged as a promising method owing to its safety and efficacy with respect to delaying the progression of advanced
tumors and protecting postoperative patients against
tumor relapse and
metastasis. Immune tolerance and suppression in tumor microenvironments are the theoretical basis of
immunotherapy. Adoptive
cell therapy functions by stimulating and cultivating autologous lymphocytes ex vivo and then reinfusing them into the patient to kill
cancer cells.
Cancer vaccination is performed using antigenic substances to activate
tumor-specific immune responses.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors can reactivate
tumor-specific T cells and develop an antitumor effect by suppressing checkpoint-mediated signaling. Oncolytic viruses may selectively replicate in
tumor cells and cause lysis without harming normal tissues. Here, we briefly introduce the mechanism of immunosuppression in
hepatocellular carcinoma and summarize the rationale of the four major immunotherapeutic approaches with their current advances.