Figure 4

Class I HLA expression, immunoediting, and survival through colorectal carcinoma stages. Stepwise selection of HLA phenotypes results in distinct tumor variants populating the three classical steps (elimination, equilibrium and escape; shaded boxes) of immunoediting. Equilibrium is defined herein quasi-equilibrium. Unlike 'true' equilibrium, that corresponds to occult cancer and dormancy [30], and was elusive even in experimental models of mouse tumorigenesis [39], quasi-equilibrium refers to edited tumor cells embedded in a clinically evident tumor mass, sufficiently large to be immunophenotyped in a human pathology facility.