Radiation therapy is traditionally used for the local control of tumour growth, but recent studies suggest that radiation therapy can have immunomodulatory properties that can be applied in combination therapy with immunotherapeutic agents. The paradigm of using radiation therapy for immunomodulation in cancer treatment is a rapidly progressing field, with multiple ongoing clinical trials exploring its use in combination with immune checkpoint blockades to induce an abscopal effect. Permutations of radiation therapy regimens, including variations in radiation dosing, radiation planning parameters and radiation modality, are being tested with varying degrees of success. The relative biological effectiveness was a concept introduced in the early days of radiation biology that allows the comparison of local tumour control across various radiation modalities and energies. Similarly, there remains a need for a new concept of comparing the immunological effectiveness of various radiation modalities. In this review, we will provide an overview of immunobiological models for preclinical and clinical monitoring of radiation therapy regimens and introduce the concept of relative immunological effectiveness to compare and screen for immune-activating functions of these regimens.

放射疗法传统上用于局部控制肿瘤生长，但最近的研究表明放射疗法具有免疫调节特性，可用于与免疫治疗剂联合治疗。在癌症治疗中使用放射疗法进行免疫调节的范例是一个快速发展的领域，多项正在进行的临床试验正在探索将其与免疫检查点阻断剂结合使用以诱导远隔效应。放射治疗方案的排列，包括放射剂量、放射规划参数和放射方式的变化，正在以不同程度的成功进行测试。相对生物学有效性是放射生物学早期引入的一个概念，它允许比较各种放射方式和能量的局部肿瘤控制。类似地，仍然需要比较各种放射方式的免疫学有效性的新概念。在这篇综述中，我们将概述用于放射治疗方案的临床前和临床监测的免疫生物学模型，并介绍相对免疫有效性的概念，以比较和筛选这些方案的免疫激活功能。