생화학분자생물학회

	Name: Il-Kyu Choi ( ik_choi@dgist.ac.kr )
	2021-present	Assistant Professor, Department of New Biology, DGIST
	2020-2021	Instructor, Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, USA
	2013-2019	Postdoctoral research fellow, Department of Medical Oncology,
		Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, USA
	2006-2012	Ph.D., Graduate Program for Nanomedical Science, Yonsei University

CD4+ cytotoxic T cells: an emerging effector arm of anti-tumor immunity

While CD8+ cytotoxic T cells have long been considered the primary effector in controlling tumors, the involvement of CD4+ “helper” T cells in anti-tumor immunity has been underappreciated. The investigations of intra-tumoral T cells, fueled by the recent advances in genomic technologies, have led to a rethinking of the indirect role of CD4+ T cells that have traditionally been described as a “helper”. Accumulating evidence from preclinical and clinical studies indicates that CD4+ T cells can acquire intrinsic cytotoxic properties and directly kill various types of tumor cells in a major histocompatibility complex class II (MHC-II)-dependent manner, as opposed to the indirect “helper” function, thus underscoring a potentially critical contribution of CD4+ cytotoxic T cells to immune responses against a wide range of tumor types. Here, we discuss the biological properties of anti-tumor CD4+ T cells with cytotoxic capability and highlight the emerging observations suggesting their more significant role in anti-tumor immunity than previously appreciated.


BMB Rep. 2023 Mar;56(3);140-144 doi: BMBRep.2023-0014
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36863358/