Present Experience and Perspectives of Immunotherapy of Lung Cancer

Czech version

Authors: L. Havel
Authors‘ workplace: Pneumologická klinika 1. LF UK a Thomayerova nemocnice, Praha
Published in: Klin Onkol 2015; 28(Supplementum 4): 73-76
Category: Specials
doi: https://doi.org/10.14735/amko20154S73

Overview

Lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world. Lung cancer is also the most common cause of death caused by cancer worldwide with fatality rate (the overall ratio of mortality to incidence) of 0.87. Nowadays, cure can be achieved only in early disease stages using surgical resection or radical radiotherapy. This approach can be considered only in 20% of patients. Outcome of therapy of loco-regionally advanced or metastatic lung cancer are unsatisfactory. Despite improvement of radiotherapy techniques, despite introduction of new cytostatics and new targeted therapies, long-term disease control could be achieved only in minority of patients. Immunotherapy is a therapeutic approach which uses the immune system itself against cancer. This article is a summary of the authors’ 17-year experience with different immunotherapeutic agents. It will be focused on big anti-cancer vaccines trials START and MAGRIT, and especially trials in the upcoming era of ‘checkpoint inhibitors’. Future perspectives of immunotherapy and its combination of recent therapeutic approaches will be considered.

Key words:
lung cancer – immunotherapy – vaccines – immune checkpoint inhibitors – programmed cell death protein 1

The author declares he has no potential conflicts of interest concerning drugs, products, or services used in the study.

The Editorial Board declares that the manuscript met the ICMJE recommendation for biomedical papers.

Submitted:
27. 7. 2015

Accepted:
27. 10. 2015

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