To what extent extracellular vesicles (EVs) can impact anti-tumor immune responses has only started to get unraveled. Their nanometer dimensions, their growing number of subtypes together with the difficulties in defining their origin hampers their investigation. The existence of tumor cell lines facilitated advance in cancer EV understanding, while capturing information about phenotypes and functions of immune cell EVs in this context is more complex. The advent of immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors has further deepened the need to dissect the impact of EVs during immune activation and response, not least to contribute unraveling and preventing the generation of resistance occurring in the majority of patients. Here we discuss the factors that influence/drive the immune response in cancer patients in the context of cancer therapeutics and the roles or possible functions EVs can have in this scenario. With immune cell-derived EVs as leitmotiv we will journey from EV discovery and subtypes through their physiological and pathological non-cancer functions to their similarities with cancer EVs and on how to revert their detrimental consequences on immune responses to cancer.

细胞外囊泡 (EV) 能在多大程度上影响抗肿瘤免疫反应才刚刚开始得到阐明。它们的纳米尺寸、不断增加的亚型数量以及确定它们起源的困难阻碍了他们的研究。肿瘤细胞系的存在促进了对癌症 EV 的理解，而在这种情况下捕获有关免疫细胞 EV 的表型和功能的信息则更为复杂。免疫检查点抑制剂免疫疗法的出现进一步加深了剖析 EV 在免疫激活和反应过程中的影响的需求，尤其是有助于揭示和防止大多数患者产生耐药性。在这里，我们讨论了在癌症治疗的背景下影响/驱动癌症患者免疫反应的因素，以及电动汽车在这种情况下可能具有的作用或可能的功能。以免疫细胞衍生的 EV 作为主旋律，我们将从 EV 的发现和亚型到它们的生理和病理非癌症功能，再到它们与癌症 EV 的相似性，以及如何恢复它们对癌症免疫反应的有害后果。