Recent advance in immunotherapy for glioblastoma multiforme

Abstract

Cancer immunotherapy is an emerging method to recognize and kill malignant cells by the ability of intrinsic immune system. Immunotherapy for glioblastoma promises the possibility of highly specific and less toxic treatment as compared with conventional chemotherapy, and immunotherapy has more lasting efficacy once immunologic memory forms. The immunotherapy for glioblastoma has faced many barriers because of specific characteristics of microenvironment in the brain. There are numerous mutant targets expressed in glioma cells and therapeutic agents that boost antitumor immune response such as peptide vaccines, dendritic cell vaccines, heat shock protein vaccines, regulation of regulatory T cells, tumor-associated PD-L1 expression, and CTLA-4 signaling, which have been proved to facilitate efficacy of killing tumor cells in vivo and in vitro, even at early phase clinical trials; but no therapy has yet been proved to improve survival in a randomized, controlled trials. The key of immunotherapy for glioblastoma is still the combination therapy of tumor antigen vaccine and T cell checkpoint therapy in the future. Key words: Glioblastoma; Immunotherapy; IDH1; Programmed cell death 1; Programmed cell death ligand 1; CTLA-4