Cancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers

Cancer immunotherapy harnesses the body's own immune system to recognize and destroy tumor cells, with a major focus on blocking the PD-1 and PD-L1 proteins that tumors exploit to suppress immune attacks. Researchers study how the cellular environment surrounding a tumor shapes whether immune cells remain active or become exhausted, and they look for measurable signals—such as tumor mutational burden and the presence of neoantigens—that might predict which patients are likely to respond to treatment. A central challenge is that only a fraction of patients benefit from checkpoint blockade, and the same treatments that unleash anti-tumor immunity can trigger serious side effects in healthy tissues, known as immune-related adverse events. Active work is now directed at identifying more reliable biomarkers, understanding the mechanisms of cancer immunoediting, and testing combination therapies that might extend responses to a broader population.

Works

145,997

Total citations

2,864,457

Keywords

Immune Checkpoint BlockadePD-1 and PD-L1Tumor MicroenvironmentTumor Mutational BurdenImmune-related Adverse EventsT-cell Exhaustion