Brain barriers at the crossroads of glioma immune surveillance and immunotherapy response

A comprehensive review in Nature Reviews Cancer by Engelhardt and Platten delineates how specialized brain barriers enforce central nervous system immune privilege, severely restricting T cell surveillance and rendering immunotherapy largely ineffective in gliomas. The authors systematically catalog the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which the blood-brain barrier, blood-CSF barrier, and meningeal barriers limit immune cell trafficking into glioma tissue. They discuss emerging strategies — including barrier modulation, intrathecal delivery, and engineered T cell approaches — aimed at overcoming these obstacles to improve T cell-based immunotherapy outcomes for glioma patients.