Viral mimicry escape as a necessary feature of malignant transformation.

Viral mimicry escape is essential for cancer transformation, enabling malignant cells to bypass immune responses and promote tumor progression.

• Why it matters: Understanding how cancer cells evade viral mimicry is crucial because this process acts as an intrinsic tumor-suppressive mechanism, and its failure facilitates cancer development.
• What they did: The authors review how cancer-associated epigenetic and RNA processing changes generate immunogenic nucleic acids, and how cancer cells suppress viral mimicry through epigenetic repression, RNA editing, and immune dampening.
• The result: Targeting viral mimicry escape mechanisms could enhance immunotherapy effectiveness, offering a unified approach to prevent cancer progression and improve treatment outcomes.