Neoadjuvant immune checkpoint blockade: A window of opportunity to advance cancer immunotherapy
Cet article passe en revue les études récentes concernant l'utilisation en traitement néoadjuvant d'inhibiteurs de point de contrôle immunitaire pour différents types de cancer (cancer du sein triple négatif, cancers de la peau, cancers gasto-intestinaux, carcinome hépatocellulaire, cancers de l'oesophage, adénocarcinomes canalaires du pancréas)
Among new treatment approaches for patients with cancer, few have accelerated as quickly as neoadjuvant immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). Neoadjuvant cancer therapy is administered before curative-intent surgery in treatment-naïve patients. Conventional neoadjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy are primarily intended to reduce tumor size, improving surgical resectability. However, recent scientific evidence outlined here suggests that neoadjuvant immunotherapy can expand and transcriptionally modify tumor-specific T cell clones to enhance both intratumoral and systemic anti-tumor immunity. It further offers a unique ? window of opportunity? to explore mechanisms and identify novel biomarkers of ICB response and resistance, opening possibilities for refining long-term clinical outcome predictions and developing new, more highly effective ICB combination therapies. Here, we examine advances in clinical and scientific knowledge gleaned from studies in select cancers and describe emerging key principles relevant to neoadjuvant ICB across many cancer types.