Prospect for Immune Checkpoint Blockade: Dynamic and Comprehensive Monitorings Pave the Way

Abstract

Immune checkpoint blockade, which releases the brake of the immune system to enhance anticancer immune response, stands out in the cancer immunotherapy field due to their remarkable and long-lasting effect. However, the overall response rate for currently approved immune checkpoint inhibitors is only about 10–40%. We have summarized three major components, which are the presence of checkpoints, the immune-activation mechanism and the immune-inhibitory mechanism, containing six factors to describe the cancer–immune interaction dynamically and comprehensively, which shed light on promising biomarkers in immune checkpoint therapy.

Keywords::

• biomarker
• cancer–immune interactions
• immune checkpoint blockade
• tumor microenvironment

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 81403022 and 81673517) and National key research and development program (no. 2016YFC0905000). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 81403022 and 81673517) and National key research and development program (no. 2016YFC0905000). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.