Anew hope: the immunotherapy in small cell lung cancer.

Abstract

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is of ahigh-grade malignancy with ahigh metastatic potential and poor clinical prognosis. Unfortunately, SCLC initially exhibits agood response to chemotherapy and radiation therapy, but inevitably, relapses decrease patients' chance of survival. Despite tremendous advances on the development of new chemotherapeutic agents, the prognosis of this disease remains poor. Immunotherapy plays arole in eliciting an anticancer response by modulating the patient's immune response of the tumor. Several studies have demonstrated that abnormal autoimmune regulation has aclose relationship with SCLC. Thus, several immunotherapy trials are focused on SCLC treatment, including such approaches as immune checkpoints blockers, tumor vaccine, antigenic targets and adoptive cellular immunotherapy to benefit patients with SCLC. To date, the results from immunotherapy in SCLC have not been promising. For example, tumor vaccines have not been demonstrated to have asignificant survival benefit. However, there have been many promising advances with immune checkpoints blockers. This review will provide ageneral overview of immunotherapy in SCLC. The landmark clinical trials in previous successful immunotherapy studies are summarized here. Finally, the challenges of immunotherapy in SCLC are discussed to facilitate the prediction of possible and valuable strategies for future therapy.