Molecular-guided therapy for disseminated cervical cancer: present and future

Abstract

Сervical cancer is recognized as one of the leaders in mortality from gynecological oncological diseases. The incidence and mortality from cervical cancer over the past 10 years remained at a consistently high level. For a long time, the only treatment option for metastatic and/or recurrent cervical cancer was cytotoxic chemotherapy, but its results remained extremely unsatisfactory: the 5-year overall survival rate was about 12%. This article is devoted to a review of the current possibilities of targeted and immunotherapy of metastatic and/or recurrent cervical cancer. We reviewed the most recent studies in the field of the effectiveness of antiangiogenic therapy including a critical and detailed analysis of the results of the GOG-240 phase III study. The data of modern literature in the field of immunotherapy using PD-1 / PD-L1 signaling pathway inhibitors in metastatic cervical cancer has been studied. It was found that a significant number of patients (34-95%) showed increased expression of PD-L1 in the tumor tissue, and 3-6% of patients showed a high level of microsatellite instability (MSI) in the tumor, which reveals the possibility of immunotherapy for this disease. We also conducted a review of ongoing clinical studies on the use of targeted and immunotherapy of advanced cervical cancer and the prospects for changing the “landscape” of treatment for this disease were assessed. On the example of a clinical case of treatment of a real patient, the possibilities of modern targeted and immunotherapy of metastatic cancer of the cervix uteri were analyzed, which gave a possibility to ensure long-term survival for the patient with an initially poor prognosis.