Both reactions make sense to me. Too much AHR activation suppresses immune response leading to cancer proliferation due immune cells not culling cancerous cells, but too little leads to auto-immune conditions. It's definitely like a large sloppy code base with lots of implicit overlaps and global effects.
"Autoimmunity and cancer as two sides of the same coin. The figure depicts how tuning of immune system regulatory mechanisms can contribute to autoimmunity, health, or cancer development."
One can wonder if induction of some autoimmune condition may be used as a treatment of some cancers.
> One can wonder if induction of some autoimmune condition may be used as a treatment of some cancers.
This is one of the bases of the checkpoint inhibitor revolution in immunotherapy. [1] The checkpoint is there to prevent immunity excesses. Temporarily turning it off is effectively an autoimmune disorder [2], one that can take out the cancer.
Similarly checkpoint inhibitors can cause autoimmune conditions that look a lot like lupus, arthritis, inflammatory bowel, endocrine disorders, etc. and it's sometimes difficult to be able treat both as it can be antagonistic. E.g. one of the checkpoint inhibitors has the opposite effect of a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
