BJMO - volume 11, issue 6, october 2017
I. Delanote , B. Legius MD, E. Wauters MD, PhD, J. Vansteenkiste MD, PhD
Current treatment options for advanced stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) include chemotherapy and targeted therapy. Immunotherapy is the most recent strategy to improve survival in NSCLC. Among other newly developed immunotherapeutics, all aiming to enhance and reinforce the natural ability of the immune system to fight cancer, lung cancer vaccines aim to increase the number of tumor-reactive T-cells. Although preclinical models have shown that vaccines enhance effector T-cell infiltration into the tumor, this effect has not been translated into clinical benefit in multiple, large, randomised, placebo-controlled studies. Recent understanding of cancer immunology has shown that the immunosuppressive microenvironment of NSCLC is able to inactivate the tumor-reactive T-cells generated by therapeutic vaccination.
Consequently, combining vaccination with other immunotherapeutics to reverse this immunosuppressive environment (such as anti-PD-1/PD-L1) seems to be the best way forward.
Furthermore it will be important to develop relevant biomarkers to choose the most adequate combination of immunotherapeutics for each individual patient, because of the diverse mechanisms of immunosuppression by the tumor.
(BELG J MED ONCOL 2017;11(6):255–258)
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