Research progress on anti-tumor immune effect of cryoablation

As one of the local treatments, cryoablation plays an increasingly important role in the comprehensive treatment of malignant tumors with its advantages of less trauma, fewer complications, fast recovery, and high reproducibility. Cryoablation uses the lethal temperature to destroy the malignant tissue locally and allow the tumor antigens released in situ to be exposed to the immune system, leading to the generation of cryo-immunological responses. The immune effect induced by cryoablation may lead to immunostimulatory or immunosuppression, which is influenced by many factors. In recent years, immunotherapy has greatly improved the efficacy of tumor treatment. Unfortunately, tumor cells develop immune tolerance through multiple pathways to evade the host’s immune attack, thus affecting the therapeutic effect. Therefore, utilizing the immune effect caused by cryoablation, and combined it with immunotherapy such as immune adjuvant, adoptive cell therapy, and immune checkpoint inhibitors may improve the treatment of malignant tumors. In this paper, we overview the research progress about the immune effect of cryoablation and its combination with different forms of immunotherapy.