Purpose: Heat shock protein 70 (HSPA family) is a multi-functional protein which protects individual cells from proteotoxic shock and the whole organism from microbial, viral and oncogenic pathogens. These diverse functions may depend upon ‘chaperone’ activity that allows Hsp70 to regulate the mechanism of damaged protein recovery or utilisation inside a cell and to be a potent adjuvant, stimulating immune activity against a variety of viral or tumour antigens. The aim of this review is to present recent data on specific roles of intracellular and extracellular Hsp70 in cancerous tissue.

Conclusion: The data presented in this paper show that endogenous Hsp70 protects cancer cells of different origins from a variety of cytotoxic threats including cancer cell therapeutics. In contrast, however, Hsp70 released from stressed cancer cells can serve as a danger signal or may recruit cells responsible for the generation of innate and adaptive immune responses against tumour cells.