# Elements of cancer immunity and the cancer-immune set point

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-chen-nature/  
OnCo record `paper-chen-nature` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Paper cited by two pathway pages and one bottleneck page, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 28102259 and published in Nature; the citing pages link this DOI, which is how the record was matched.

## Summary

Immunotherapy is proving to be an effective therapeutic approach in a variety of cancers. But despite the clinical success of antibodies against the immune regulators CTLA4 and PD-L1/PD-1, only a subset of people exhibit durable responses, suggesting that a broader view of cancer immunity is required. Immunity is influenced by a complex set of tumour, host and environmental factors that govern the strength and timing of the anticancer response. Clinical studies are beginning to define these factors as immune profiles that can predict responses to immunotherapy. In the context of the cancer-immunity cycle, such factors combine to represent the inherent immunological status - or 'cancer-immune set point' - of an individual.

Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 28102259 (DOI 10.1038/nature21349). Matched by DOI alone: two pathway pages and one bottleneck page cite this DOI among their external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Tags: europepmc-ingest
- Journal: Nature
- Year: 2017
- DOI: 10.1038/nature21349
- Authors: Chen DS, Mellman I
- What it means: Two pathway pages and one bottleneck page on OnCo cite this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing pages listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
- Caveats: Matched to the citing OnCo records by DOI alone; the summary reproduces the Europe PMC abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.

## Sources

- Nature 2017: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21349
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28102259/
- Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/28102259

## Connected records

- pathways: [Cold tumours: immune deserts and exclusion](https://onco.cc/pathways/immune-desert-exclusion/), [The cancer-immunity cycle](https://onco.cc/pathways/cancer-immunity-cycle/)
- bottlenecks: [Cold tumours and the immunosuppressive microenvironment](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-tme-immunosuppression/)
- journals: [Nature](https://onco.cc/journals/nature/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/paper-chen-nature.json