Cancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers

Cancer immunotherapy harnesses the body's own immune system to recognize and destroy tumor cells, with one of its most successful strategies being immune checkpoint blockade — drugs that release molecular "brakes" on immune cells, particularly by targeting proteins like PD-1 and PD-L1. Whether a patient responds to these treatments depends on a complex interplay of factors within the tumor microenvironment, including how mutated the cancer's proteins are, how exhausted the attacking T-cells have become, and whether the tumor has evolved ways to hide from immune surveillance. Researchers are working to identify reliable biomarkers — measurable signals such as tumor mutational burden or neoantigen profiles — that can predict who will benefit from treatment and who risks serious immune-related side effects without meaningful gain. A central open question is how to overcome resistance in tumors that initially evade or eventually outsmart checkpoint blockade, driving growing interest in combination therapies that attack these evasion mechanisms from multiple angles simultaneously.

Works

143,945

Total citations

2,822,886

Keywords

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