Letter to the editor: Checking the pulse of adoptive cell therapy for solid tumors. Thoughts from the abstracts submitted to the 35th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2020)

• Published in: Journal for immunotherapy of cancer Vol. 9; no. 1; p. e002216
• Main Authors: Markovska, Martina, Marincola, Francesco
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BMJ Publishing Group LTD 01.01.2021; BMJ Publishing Group
• Subjects: Adoptive Transfer - methods; Antigens; Antigens, Neoplasm - immunology; Cancer; Congresses as Topic; Hematology; Humans; Immunotherapy; Integrated approach; Lymphocytes; Neoplasms - immunology; Neoplasms - therapy; Product development; Trends; Tumor Microenvironment; Tumors; chimeric antigen; lymphocytes; receptors; preclinical; immunotherapy; cell engineering; drug evaluation; tumor-infiltrating
• ISSN: 2051-1426; 2051-1426
• DOI: 10.1136/jitc-2020-002216

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) for the treatment of solid malignancies has not met yet the success of hematological malignancies. This is due to additional roadblocks peculiar to its deployment for the former application. While T-cell fitness stands as a prerequisite for all purposes of ACT, selection of optimal tumor-specific antigens, efficient trafficking to neoplastic tissues, and overcoming immune exclusion and/or suppression are challenges pertaining predominantly to solid malignancies. To gain insights about the current interest on the subject in both academia and industry, we surveyed a snapshot of topical activities and checked the pulse of the field by reviewing content extracted from 94 abstracts submitted, under the subject “cellular therapies”, to the 35th Anniversary Annual Meeting of the Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer.