Table 3:

NLRP3 activation in response to therapy.

Therapy class	Drug	Cancer	Proposed mechanism(s)	Expression of inflammasome components / activation	Immune response effect / outcome	Ref.
Chemotherapy	Doxorubicin & daunorubicin	N/A (in vitro BMDMs)	ND	↑ NLRP3* and IL-1β	↑ drug-related adverse events	Sauter et al., 2011
	Doxorubicin	ALL	ND	↑ NLRP3*, IL-18 and caspase-1	↑ Therapy resistance	Zhongbo Hu et al.
	5-FU	OSCC	ND	↑ NLRP3*	↑ Toxicity and poor clinical outcomes	Feng et al., 2017
	5-FU & gemcitabine	Lymphoma	Activation of MDSCs	↑ NLRP3* and IL-1β	↑ Therapy resistance and immunosuppression	Bruchard et al., 2013
	Gemcitabine	TNBC	ND	↑ NLRP3 and IL-1β	↑ Therapy resistance	Zheng et al., 2020
Radiotherapy	Radiation	GBM and N/A (in vitro BMDMs)	ND	↑ NLRP3*, IL-1β and caspase-1	↓ Survival ↑ tumor volume ↓ survival	Liu et al., 2017
Checkpoint inhibitors	Anti-PD-1	Melanoma, breast and N/A (in vivo/in vitro myeloid cells)	Constitutive NLRP3 activation in melanoma cells mediate recruitment of MDSCs and expression of PD-L1	↑ NLRP3* and IL-1β	↑ Tumor volume and immunosuppression ↓ survival	Tengesdal et al., 2021b; Theivanthi ran et al., 2020; Tengesdal et al., 2021a
	Anti-PD-1	DLBCL	NLRP3 activation increased PD-L1 in DLBCL cells	↑ NLRP3*	↑ Tumor progression and immunosuppres sion	Lu et al., 2021; Li et al., 2015
TKIs	Vemurafenib and trametinib	Melanoma cells	ND	↑ NLRP3	↑ Therapy resistance	Zhai et al., 2017
	Imatinib	CML	ND	↑ IL-1β	↑ Therapy resistance	Lee et al., 2016
	Imatinib and mastinib	N/A (in vitro myeloid cells)	Therapy-induced lysosomal damage	↑ NLRP3* and IL-1β	↑ Therapy resistance and toxicity	Neuwirt et al., 2023; Huang et al., 2022
Cancer vaccine	NA	Lung, colorectal cancer, melanoma	Adjuvant-induced IL-1β production needed for adaptive immune response	↑ NLRP3* and IL-1β	↑ antigen presentation and acquired immunity activation	Ben-Sasson, Hogg, et al., 2013, Marty-Roix et al., 2016; Tahtinen et al., 2022; Tritto et al., 2009

Arrows indicate ↑ (increase) and ↓ (decrease)

^*Indicates NLRP3 activation was demonstrated

ND Indicates mechanism not described

NA Not applicable