Drug resistance in cancer immunotherapy: new strategies to improve checkpoint inhibitor therapies

Abstract

Recent advances in pharmacological immune modulation against tumor cells has dramatically changed the paradigm of cancer treatment. Checkpoint inhibitor therapy is a form of cancer immunotherapy already in clinical setting but also under active basic and clinical investigation. Nevertheless, some patients are primary unresponsive or develop ulterior resistance to these family of drugs. This review aims to update the basic molecular mechanism of resistance as well as the current strategies for checkpoint inhibitor selection in order to propose new approaches to individualize the use of these novel therapies.

Keywords

Immunotherapy / checkpoint inhibitors / cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 / programmed death receptor-1 / programmed death ligand-1

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