Immunotherapeutic strategies to induce inflection in the immune response: therapy for cancer and COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Cancer has agonized the human race for millions of years. The present decade witnesses biological therapeutics to combat cancer effectively. Cancer Immunotherapy involves the use of therapeutics for manipulation of the immune system by immune agents like cytokines, vaccines, and transfection agents. Recently, this therapeutic approach has got vast attention due to the current pandemic COVID-19 and has been very effective. Concerning cancer, immunotherapy is based on the activation of the host’s antitumor response by enhancing effector cell number and the production of soluble mediators, thereby reducing the host’s suppressor mechanisms by induction of a tumour killing environment and by modulating immune checkpoints. In the present era, immunotherapies have gained traction and momentum as a pedestal of cancer treatment, improving the prognosis of many patients with a wide variety of haematological and solid malignancies. Food supplements, natural immunomodulatory drugs, and phytochemicals, with recent developments, have shown positive trends in cancer treatment by improving the immune system. The current review presents the systematic studies on major immunotherapeutics and their development for the effective treatment of cancers as well as in COVID-19. The focus of the review is to highlight comparative analytics of existing and novel immunotherapies in cancers, concerning immunomodulatory drugs and natural immunosuppressants, including immunotherapy in COVID-19 patients.

KEYWORDS:

• PD-L1
• immunotherapy
• CTL4
• adoptive transfer
• immunomodulators

Acknowledgement

MD acknowledge the DST-INSPIRE Faculty award, 2017 (IFA17-LSPA82)

Disclosure statement

Authors wish to confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest associated with this publication and there has been no significant financial support for this work that could have influenced its outcome.

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All authors have given their consent to participate in this work.

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All authors have given their consent to publish this work.

Author’s contribution

SH and MD have designed, conceptualized the work and performed final editing. PA and SM have done the literature survey and initial review writing.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Manish Dwivedi

Dr. Manish Dwivedi, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow, India and awarded with prestigious DST-INSPIRE Faculty by Government of India in 2017. Dr. Dwivedi has extensive experience in international research labs and running international collaborative researches. He gained his doctoral degree from the University of Allahabad, India in 2014. He has got awarded with international PBC-Post-Doctoral fellowship (2014) by Israel, Planning & Budget committee of Higher Education and joined the Prof. Etana Padan’s lab in The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel during which he has worked on the structure-function relationship of NhaA, Na+/H+ antiporter, an integral membrane protein which exchanges Na+/H+ across the cytoplasmic membrane. He is also a recipient of awards offered by DBT, India and EMBO, Germany. Dr. Dwivedi is an Ambassador of Bentham Science Publication and also got selected as an alternate panel for renowned Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship.His research group focuses on structural and functional characterization of membrane proteins, currently working on Na+/H+ Antiporter, NhaA in closed collaboration with Prof. Etana Padan, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Major findings have been published in high impact journals like Nature comm, JBC, JMB, SREP, Computers in Biology and Medicine etc. He is actively serving as a member of the Editorial Board of various international journals and also as members of different international and national academic/research communities.