Cancer immunotherapy – revisited

• Published in: Nature reviews. Drug discovery Vol. 10; no. 8; pp. 591 - 600
• Main Authors: Punt, Cornelis J. A, Lesterhuis, W. Joost, Haanen, John B. A. G
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.08.2011; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/154/436/108; 631/67/1059/2325; 67; Antibodies, Monoclonal - therapeutic use; Antigens, CD - immunology; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Biotechnology; Cancer; Cancer Research; Cancer Vaccines - immunology; Care and treatment; Chemotherapy; Clinical trials; Clinical Trials as Topic; CTLA-4 Antigen; Health aspects; Humans; Immune response; Immunotherapy; Immunotherapy - methods; Immunotherapy, Adoptive; Ipilimumab; Medicinal Chemistry; Molecular Medicine; Neoplasms - immunology; Neoplasms - therapy; Pharmacology/Toxicology; Remission; Research Design; review-article; Reviews; T-Lymphocytes, Regulatory - immunology; Netherlands
• ISSN: 1474-1776; 1474-1784
• DOI: 10.1038/nrd3500

Key Points Clinical development of immunotherapy has been hampered by the complexity of defining the optimal dose and schedule, and the lack of financial support. There is an urgent need for assays that can adequately monitor the induced antitumour immune response and predict the response to immunotherapy. The kinetics of antitumour responses are considerably different between immunotherapy and cytotoxic chemotherapy, as initial progression and even the appearance of new lesions may precede tumour shrinkage following immunotherapy. The clinical applicability of immunotherapy has recently been boosted by the positive results of various approaches, such as CTLA4-specific antibody therapy. Recent findings on a positive interaction between immunotherapy and chemotherapy warrant further investigations Although our insight into antitumour immune responses has increased substantially in the past few decades, the development of immunotherapy for cancer has been hampered by challenges including the identification of optimal treatment strategies and methods to evaluate them. However, as Punt and colleagues discuss, the recent positive results of clinical trials with novel immunological drugs, as well as the unexpected finding of a positive interaction between immunotherapy and chemotherapy, may herald a new era for cancer immunotherapy. Our insight into antitumour immune responses has increased considerably during the past decades, yet the development of immunotherapy as a treatment modality for cancer has been hampered by several factors. These include difficulties in the selection of the optimal dose and schedule, the methods of evaluation, and financial support. Although durable clinical remissions have been observed with various immunotherapeutic strategies, the percentage of patients who benefited from these interventions has remained too small to justify the general use of such strategies. However, the recent positive results of clinical trials with novel immunoactive drugs as well as the unexpected finding of a positive interaction between immunotherapy and chemotherapy may herald a new era for the immunotherapy of cancer.