Immunotherapy of glioblastoma: Recent advances and future prospects

Abstract

Glioblastoma (GBM) stands out as the most common, aggressive form of primary malignant brain tumor conferring a devastatingly poor prognosis. Despite aggressive standard-of-care in surgical resection and chemoradiation with temozolomide, the median overall survival of patients still remains no longer than 15 months, due to significant tumor heterogeneity, immunosuppression induced by the tumor immune microenvironment and low mutational burden. Advances in immunotherapeutic approaches have revolutionized the treatment of various cancer types and become conceptually attractive for glioblastoma. In this review, we provide an overview of the basic knowledge underlying immune targeting and promising immunotherapeutic strategies including CAR T cells, oncolytic viruses, cancer vaccines, and checkpoint blockade inhibitors that have been recently investigated in glioblastoma. Current clinical trials and previous clinical trial findings are discussed, shedding light on novel strategies to overcome various limitations and challenges.

Keywords: Glioblastoma; chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell; immunotherapy; oncolytic virus.

Figure 1.

Overview of the current immunotherapeutic modalities for the treatment of glioblastoma.

Figure 2.

Overview of immunosuppressive pathways in glioblastoma.