Progress in basic research on immunotherapy combined with autophagy inhibitors in the treatment of oral squamous cell carcinoma

FAN Shuang-shuang; WANG Shu

doi:10.19749/j.cn.cjgd.1672-2973.2025.02.014

Abstract：Oral squamous cell carcinoma is a type of disease that seriously affects human health and quality of life.The current treatment methods include surgery,radiotherapy,chemotherapy and immunotherapy,but all have certain limitations in treatment effects.In recent years,based on the discovery of autophagy in the treatment process of oral cancer,inducing autophagy in oral cancer cells can inhibit cancer cell proliferation,promote cancer cell apoptosis,and the combined application of autophagy inhibitors with radiotherapy and chemotherapy can relatively increase the survival rate of patients and improve the prognosis.In addition,by inducing autophagy in oral cancer cells,the immune function of patients can be promoted,thus improving the therapeutic effect.At present,studies have begun to try to combine autophagy inhibitors with interleukin-24,interferon-y and other cytokines to increase the pro-apoptotic effect and inhibit the proliferation of cancer cells to obtain more remarkable therapeutic effects.In addition,autophagy inhibitors can also trigger the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors(ICIs).Moreover,autophagy inhibitors can still be combined with natural killer(NK)cells,chimeric antigen receptor T(CAR-T)therapy and tumor vaccines to improve anti-cancer response in non-small cell lung cancer,blood cancer and breast cancer,etc.,but at present,they are limited to pre-clinical exploration and have not been applied in clinical practice,and the research in oral squamous cell carcinoma is even more limited.This paper will explore the treatment of oral squamous cell carcinoma by immunotherapy combined with autophagy inhibitors,hoping to provide a strong basis for the development strategy of immunotherapy combined with autophagy inhibitors in the future so as to achieve early clinical treatment.