Precision Medicine-Enabled Cancer Immunotherapy

Abstract

Repairing defects in anti-tumor immunity has been a longstanding challenge in cancer therapy, and in recent years, immunotherapy has emerged as a promising approach for treating advanced disease. While the interactions between the immune system and cancer have been studied for more than a century, only in recent years has the field realized the tremendous potential in stimulating the immune system to eradicate cancer. From early investigations by William Coley in using bacteria to treat cancer patients to more recent work in adoptively transferred engineered T cells to identify and kill cancer cells has opened up an entire field dedicated to re-educating the immune system in a cancer patient. A multitude of immunotherapy strategies have been proposed and tested in clinical trials, from recombinant proteins, agonistic antibodies, and checkpoint inhibitors designed to re-invigorate anti-tumor immunity, to vaccine approaches and adoptive T-cell strategies, we are now on the cusp of an exciting revolution that will ultimately become an arsenal of therapies to treat any cancer type, at any stage, with the hope of robust and durable responses in cancer patients. In this chapter, we will examine the various immunotherapy strategies under active clinical investigation, with a particular focus on the latest advances in cellular immunotherapies and the future of precision medicine-enabled immunotherapy.

Keywords: Cancer immunotherapy; Cancer vaccines; Checkpoint inhibitors; Oncolytic virus; Precision medicine.