Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors Therapy in Prostate Cancer: Lessons Learnt

Abstract

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) therapy has rapidly changed the treatment landscape for a number of cancers but resulted in only marginal success in prostate cancer (PCa). In order to bring about durable clinical benefit of immune check point inhibitor therapy in prostate cancer, it is critical to understand the current status of ICIs therapy for PCa and reasons for low/negligible outcomes. This article summarizes the current status of ICIs therapy in PCa and discusses how ICIs therapy can result in the successful treatment of a specific subset of PCa patients. In this article, we review how immunotherapy and different combination therapies are paving their way by incorporating the strategies of converting the “cold” PCa tumor into “hot”, role of genomic landscape of PCa in influencing the outcome of ICIs therapy, what are the promising novel biomarker candidates, which can guide the patient selection for ICIs therapy and help in monitoring the efficacy of treatment. This article highlights that ICIs therapy hold a promising future in subset of PCa patients.