Increasing cure rates of solid tumors by immune checkpoint inhibitors

Weijie Ma^#^{1

2}, Ruobing Xue^#^{1

3}, Zheng Zhu^#^{1

4}, Hizra Farrukh⁴, Wenru Song^{1

5}, Tianhong Li^{6

7

8}, Lei Zheng^{9

10}, Chong-Xian Pan^{11

12

13}

Affiliations

¹ Chinese American Hematologist and Oncologist Network, New York, NY, USA.
² Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH, 03756, USA.
³ Ellis Fischel Cancer Center, University of Missouri, 1 Hospital Dr, Columbia, MO, 65201, USA.
⁴ Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
⁵ Kira Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁶ Chinese American Hematologist and Oncologist Network, New York, NY, USA. thli@ucdavis.edu.
⁷ Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology & Oncology, University of California Davis, Sacramento, CA, 95817, USA. thli@ucdavis.edu.
⁸ Department of Medicine, VA Northern California Health Care System, Mather, CA, USA. thli@ucdavis.edu.
⁹ Chinese American Hematologist and Oncologist Network, New York, NY, USA. lzheng6@jhmi.edu.
¹⁰ The Sydney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, 21287, USA. lzheng6@jhmi.edu.
¹¹ Chinese American Hematologist and Oncologist Network, New York, NY, USA. Chongxian_pan@hms.harvard.edu.
¹² VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, 02132, USA. Chongxian_pan@hms.harvard.edu.
¹³ Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Chongxian_pan@hms.harvard.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 36647169
PMCID: PMC9843946
DOI: 10.1186/s40164-023-00372-8

Review

Increasing cure rates of solid tumors by immune checkpoint inhibitors

Weijie Ma et al. Exp Hematol Oncol. 2023.

. 2023 Jan 16;12(1):10.

doi: 10.1186/s40164-023-00372-8.

Authors

Weijie Ma^#^{1

2}, Ruobing Xue^#^{1

3}, Zheng Zhu^#^{1

4}, Hizra Farrukh⁴, Wenru Song^{1

5}, Tianhong Li^{6

7

8}, Lei Zheng^{9

10}, Chong-Xian Pan^{11

12

13}

Affiliations

¹ Chinese American Hematologist and Oncologist Network, New York, NY, USA.
² Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH, 03756, USA.
³ Ellis Fischel Cancer Center, University of Missouri, 1 Hospital Dr, Columbia, MO, 65201, USA.
⁴ Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
⁵ Kira Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁶ Chinese American Hematologist and Oncologist Network, New York, NY, USA. thli@ucdavis.edu.
⁷ Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology & Oncology, University of California Davis, Sacramento, CA, 95817, USA. thli@ucdavis.edu.
⁸ Department of Medicine, VA Northern California Health Care System, Mather, CA, USA. thli@ucdavis.edu.
⁹ Chinese American Hematologist and Oncologist Network, New York, NY, USA. lzheng6@jhmi.edu.
¹⁰ The Sydney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, 21287, USA. lzheng6@jhmi.edu.
¹¹ Chinese American Hematologist and Oncologist Network, New York, NY, USA. Chongxian_pan@hms.harvard.edu.
¹² VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, 02132, USA. Chongxian_pan@hms.harvard.edu.
¹³ Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Chongxian_pan@hms.harvard.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 36647169
PMCID: PMC9843946
DOI: 10.1186/s40164-023-00372-8

Abstract

Immunotherapy has become the central pillar of cancer therapy. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), a major category of tumor immunotherapy, reactivate preexisting anticancer immunity. Initially, ICIs were approved only for advanced and metastatic cancers in the salvage setting after or concurrent with chemotherapy at a response rate of around 20-30% with a few exceptions. With significant progress over the decade, advances in immunotherapy have led to numerous clinical trials investigating ICIs as neoadjuvant and/or adjuvant therapies for resectable solid tumors. The promising results of these trials have led to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals of ICIs as neoadjuvant or adjuvant therapies for non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma, triple-negative breast cancer, and bladder cancer, and the list continues to grow. This therapy represents a paradigm shift in cancer treatment, as many early-stage cancer patients could be cured with the introduction of immunotherapy in the early stages of cancer. Therefore, this topic became one of the main themes at the 2021 China Cancer Immunotherapy Workshop co-organized by the Chinese American Hematologist and Oncologist Network, the China National Medical Products Administration and the Tsinghua University School of Medicine. This review article summarizes the current landscape of ICI-based immunotherapy, emphasizing the new clinical developments of ICIs as curative neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapies for early-stage disease.

Keywords: Adjuvant therapy; Breast cancer; Gastrointestinal cancers; Genitourinary cancers; Gynecological cancer; Head and neck cancer; Immune checkpoint inhibitor; Immunotherapy; Lung cancer; Melanoma; Neoadjuvant therapy.

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Conflict of interest statement

LZ: grant support from Bristol-Meyer Squibb, Merck, AstraZeneca, iTeos, Amgen, NovaRock, Inxmed, and Halozyme; paid consultant/Advisory Board Member at Biosion, Alphamab, NovaRock, Ambrx, Akrevia/Xilio, Datarevive, QED, Xilio, Natera, Novagenesis, Snow Lake Captials, and Mingruizhiyao; and shareholder at Alphamab and Mingruzhiyao. WS: an employee of Kira Pharmaceuticals. CXP is a co-founder and shareholder of LP Therapeutics.

Figures

**Fig. 1**
FDA approvals of first-line immunotherapy for advanced/metastatic cancer

**Fig. 2**
Neoadjuvant vs Adjuvant Immunotherapy in solid tumors

**Fig. 3**
FDA approvals of neoadjuvant and adjuvant immunotherapy for localized cancer

See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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1. Zheng L, et al. Vaccine-induced intratumoral lymphoid aggregates correlate with survival following treatment with a neoadjuvant and adjuvant vaccine in patients with resectable pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Clin Cancer Res. 2021;27(5):1278–1286. doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-20-2974. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
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Increasing cure rates of solid tumors by immune checkpoint inhibitors

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Increasing cure rates of solid tumors by immune checkpoint inhibitors

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