Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2019 Jun 15;20(12):2927.
doi: 10.3390/ijms20122927.

Ovarian Cancer Immunotherapy: Turning up the Heat

Eleonora Ghisoni  1   2 , Martina Imbimbo  3 , Stefan Zimmermann  4 , Giorgio Valabrega  5
Affiliations
Review

Ovarian Cancer Immunotherapy: Turning up the Heat

Eleonora Ghisoni et al. Int J Mol Sci. .

Abstract

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the leading cause of death among gynecological malignancies. Despite surgery and chemotherapy, 5-years survival rates have improved only modestly over the past few decades remaining at 45% for advanced stages. Therefore, novel therapies are urgently needed. The presence of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in OC tumor microenvironment (TME) has already proved to be correlated with overall survival (OS), while immune evasion mechanisms are associated with poor prognosis. Although these data indicate that immunotherapy has a strong rationale in OC, single agent immune-checkpoints inhibitors (ICIs) have shown only modest results in this malignancy. In this review, we will discuss immune-targeting combination therapies and adoptive cell therapy (ACT), highlighting the challenges represented by these strategies, which aim at disrupting the stroma-tumor barrier to boost immune system against ovarian cancer.

Keywords: adoptive cell therapy; immunotherapy; ovarian cancer; tumor infiltrating-lymphocytes; tumor microenvironment.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Representative scheme of combination therapies approaches and adoptive cell therapy (ACT) in OC.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Siegel R.L., Miller K.D., Jemal A. Cancer statistics, 2019. CA Cancer J. Clin. 2019;69:7–34. doi: 10.3322/caac.21551. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ledermann J.A., Raja F.A., Fotopoulou C., Gonzalez-Martin A., Colombo N., Sessa C., ESMO Guidelines Working Group Newly diagnosed and relapsed epithelial ovarian carcinoma: ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up. Ann. Oncol. 2013;24:vi24–vi32. doi: 10.1093/annonc/mdt333. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Mirza M.R., Pignata S., Ledermann J.A. Latest clinical evidence and further development of PARP inhibitors in ovarian cancer. Ann. Oncol. 2018;29:1366–1376. doi: 10.1093/annonc/mdy174. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Miller K.D., Siegel R.L., Lin C.C., Mariotto A.B., Kramer J.L., Rowland J.H., Stein K.D., Alteri R., Jemal A. Cancer treatment and survivorship statistics, 2016. CA Cancer J. Clin. 2016;66:271–289. doi: 10.3322/caac.21349. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Schlienger K., Chu C.S., Woo E.Y., Rivers P.M., Toll A.J., Hudson B., Maus M.V., Riley J.L., Choi Y., Coukos G., et al. TRANCE-and CD40 ligand-matured dendritic cells reveal MHC class I-restricted T cells specific for autologous tumor in late-stage ovarian cancer patients. Clin. Cancer Res. 2003;9:1517–1527. - PubMed

MeSH terms

Substances