Roles of IL-1 in Cancer: From Tumor Progression to Resistance to Targeted Therapies

IL-1 belongs to a family of 11 members and is one of the seven receptor-agonists withpro-inflammatory activity. Beyond its biological role as a regulator of the innate immune response,IL-1 is involved in stress and chronic inflammation, therefore it is responsible for several pathologicalconditions. In particular, IL-1 is known to exert a critical function in malignancies, influencing thetumor microenvironment and promoting cancer initiation and progression. Thus, it orchestratesimmunosuppression recruiting pro-tumor immune cells of myeloid origin. Furthermore, new recentfindings showed that this cytokine can be directly produced by tumor cells in a positive feedback loopand contributes to the failure of targeted therapy. Activation of anti-apoptotic signaling pathwaysand senescence are some of the mechanisms recently proposed, but the role of IL-1 in tumor cellsrefractory to standard therapies needs to be further investigated.