Foreward for the special issue ‘thermal therapy and immunotherapy at the crossroads of new discovery’

Dear Sir,

We are proud to support the publication of this special issue of The International Journal of Hyperthermia and Thermal Therapies focused on tumor immunity. We appreciate the Journal Editorial Board and Special Editors for developing this compilation of the most cutting-edge research exploring the interplay between thermal therapies and the immune system. We also thank all the authors for their significant contributions; their high-quality papers attest to the immense opportunity created by the field of thermal therapy.

Innovation does not happen within a vacuum. Within industry, we understand that to bring new products to market we must collaborate with the broader research community. Through supporting publication in an open-access journal with an international multi-disciplinary readership (technology, design, engineering pre-clinical and clinical researchers), we aim to foster the transfer of knowledge and the sharing of ideas to ignite the interest and encourage the contribution of others to this field. Such communication and collaboration will expedite progress, and ultimately advance medicine.

Immunotherapy presents a new era in cancer care, where the stunning clinical and commercial success of checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy has dominated the headlines in recent years. However, their limitations as monotherapy are increasingly being understood (relatively low response rates in many tumor types, treatment-emergent resistance). Combinatorial strategies, important throughout the history of cancer care, are also perceived as its future, with physicians experienced in using a battery of physical tumor treatments such as hyperthermia, cryotherapy and radiation with surgery and chemotherapy. Immunotherapy presents a new era for industry too, with an unprecedented increase in strategic partnerships between med-tech and pharma companies to develop and commercialize such combination therapies.

Innovation does not always require something entirely new. In the history of cancer care, the precise mechanism of action of many drugs were not elucidated before decades of use in practice, which then enabled refinement to more selective therapeutic agents with improved efficacy and decreased toxicity. Ablative hyperthermia or cryotherapy products have been marketed primarily on their ability to destroy tumors locally and are widely used in clinical practice today for this purpose. This special issue illustrates that thermal therapies have a far greater role to play. Through immunogenic cell death driving antigen presentation, they also serve as an in situ ‘vaccine’, acting systemically through the immune system and can impact metastatic disease. These new perspectives on the full mechanism of action of thermal therapies are pivotal to engineering advanced products optimized for use.

While our understanding is rapidly evolving, we still have much to learn about how best to use thermal therapies to optimize an anti-tumor immune response, what biomarkers predict response and other influences on outcomes (microbiome), and how best to use them in combination with immunotherapies (not just checkpoint inhibitor drugs and cell therapies, but the next-generation of immunotherapies to come). That said, it’s clear thermal therapy and immunotherapy are two disciplines that have complimentary mechanisms which hold great promise for improving cancer care.

When companies and research communities work in tandem to push the frontiers of knowledge, they become a powerful engine for advancing science and driving meaningful innovation. We hope that working together we may accelerate the development and application of improved therapeutic tools designed to extend and improve life, and generate clinical evidence to improve patient access to these therapies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.