Cancer immunotherapy: the beginning of the end of cancer?

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Abstract

These are exciting times for cancer immunotherapy. After many years of disappointing results, the tide has finally changed and immunotherapy has become a clinically validated treatment for many cancers. Immunotherapeutic strategies include cancer vaccines, oncolytic viruses, adoptive transfer of ex vivo activated T and natural killer cells, and administration of antibodies or recombinant proteins that either costimulate cells or block the so-called immune checkpoint pathways. The recent success of several immunotherapeutic regimes, such as monoclonal antibody blocking of cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) and programmed cell death protein 1 (PD1), has boosted the development of this treatment modality, with the consequence that new therapeutic targets and schemes which combine various immunological agents are now being described at a breathtaking pace. In this review, we outline some of the main strategies in cancer immunotherapy (cancer vaccines, adoptive cellular immunotherapy, immune checkpoint blockade, and oncolytic viruses) and discuss the progress in the synergistic design of immune-targeting combination therapies.

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Most cited references 103

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Author and article information

Contributors

Ivan M. Blasutig: (416) 340-4800 , ivan.blasutig@uhn.on.ca

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Med

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Med

Title: BMC Medicine

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1741-7015

Publication date (Electronic): 5 May 2016

Publication date PMC-release: 5 May 2016

Publication date Collection: 2016

Volume: 14

Electronic Location Identifier: 73

Affiliations

[ ]Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON Canada

[ ]Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, ON Canada

[ ]Department of Clinical Biochemistry, University Health Network, Toronto, ON Canada

[ ]Clinical Biochemistry, Toronto General Hospital, 200 Elizabet St. Rm 3EB-365, Toronto, ON M5G2C4 Canada

Article

Publisher ID: 623

DOI: 10.1186/s12916-016-0623-5

PMC ID: 4858828

PubMed ID: 27151159

SO-VID: c9fb485c-8bde-4520-a8a8-29141523c004

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

History

Date received : 28 January 2016

Date accepted : 29 April 2016

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Medicine

Keywords: cancer,immunotherapy,t cells,adoptive cellular therapy,cytotoxic t lymphocyte-associated protein 4,programmed cell death protein 1,immune checkpoint blockade

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Medicine

Keywords: cancer, immunotherapy, t cells, adoptive cellular therapy, cytotoxic t lymphocyte-associated protein 4, programmed cell death protein 1, immune checkpoint blockade

Cancer immunotherapy: the beginning of the end of cancer?

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