Immunotherapy: the blockbuster in cancer treatment

Abstract

Cancer immunotherapies, especially immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), have changed the landscape of treatment in various types of cancer ever since 2013, when cancer immunotherapy was rated as the breakthrough of the year by Science journal. Immune checkpoint proteins, such as PD-1, could facilitate tumor immune evasion by suppressing T-cell function via binding to PD-L1, which is often expressed on tumor cell surface. ICIs could release the immune break and remotivate T-cells to attack tumor cells. Due to the unique mechanism of action, ICIs have been shown to be effective in many malignancies, both solid tumors and hematologic cancers, such as melanoma, nonsmall cell lung cancer, gastric cancer, head and neck squamous cell cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, extranodal NK/Tcell lymphoma, and so on. Moreover, there has been an avalanche of clinical trials underway in the whole pipeline of cancer treatment.