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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: Semin Cancer Biol. 2017 Dec 16;52(Pt 2):125–134. doi: 10.1016/j.semcancer.2017.12.007

Figure 1. From radiotherapy to abscopal responses: the keys steps.

Figure 1

Radiotherapy (RT) can mediate local tumor control and abscopal responses via three critical steps: (1) by inducing regulated cell death and/or senescence amongst malignant cells; (2) by increasing their antigenicity and/or adjuvanticity; and (3) by mediating local or systemic immunostimulatory effects that do not originate from malignant cells (off-target immunostimulation). Three major resistance mechanisms can counteract such effects and therefore compromise the therapeutic activity of RT: (1) the intrinsic radioresistance of malignant cells; (2) off-target immunosuppression; and (3) the induction of the DNA exonuclease three prime repair exonuclease 1 (TREX1).