Kldiashvili Ekaterina and Bokuchava Lana
Despite significant advances in treatment and diagnostics, cancer remains a major healthcare problem worldwide. The incidence of cancer had significantly increased globally due to the high rates of exposure to risk factors and increasing average life expectancy. It is known, that the immune system is responsible for development of a specific response against tumors. However, activated immunocompetent cells are frequently failed in their mission to reject the tumor, which leads to cancer progression and metastasis. Such failure of immune system is linked with the phenomenon of cancer recurrence, which is based on widespread of highly metastatic tumor cells with low immunogenicity. Therefore, the tumor cells acquire the ability to avoid the monitoring of immune system and become resistant to anti-cancer drugs. This specificity of the tumor cell is the key barrier to the successful treatment and management of cancer. The role of specific genes, epigenetics as well as tumor microenvironment should be further investigated and determined.