Novel Combinatorial Approaches for Immunotherapy and Targeted Therapies in Cancer
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Therapy".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2025) | Viewed by 17619
Special Issue Editors
Interests: biochemistry; antibodies; fusion proteins; immunoconjugates; bi-specific antibodies; phage display; immunobiotechnology; breast cancer; cancer immunotherapy; cardioncology; signal transduction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: nucleic acid aptamer; SELEX technology; tumor markers; targeted therapy; targeted drug delivery; cancer theranostics; cancer cell biology and signaling; chemotherapy resistance; tumor microenvironment; TNBC
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Immunotherapy, based on the use of novel human monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) with antitumor or immunomodulatory activity, is an increasingly important strategy for cancer management. Targeted drugs can be directed against tumor-associated antigens (TAA) that are overexpressed on the cell surface of tumor cells to either inhibit their oncogenic function or to specifically deliver toxic compounds. Alternatively, they can be used in cancer therapy to regulate specific T-cell responses, targeting immune checkpoints (ICs), such as Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte-Associated Antigen 4 (CTLA-4) or Programmed Death-1 (PD-1), thus enhancing the protective role of the immune system against cancer.
The main limit of this strategy is that an immune checkpoint blockade may induce resistance to the treatment with IC inhibitors (ICIs), owing to several molecular escape mechanisms. Thus, many ongoing clinical trials are currently testing these novel agents in combinatorial treatments, in order to obtain stronger therapeutic responses against the tumors with respect to single agent treatments.
A successful combinatorial treatment was indeed represented by ipilimumab (anti-CTLA-4 mAb) and nivolumab (anti-PD-1 mAb), which is currently in clinical use for patients affected by metastatic melanoma and has achieved higher therapeutic efficacy in terms of overall survival with respect to monotherapies. A recent study of a clinical trial in phase 1b includes patients treated with the combination of atezolizumab (anti-PD-L1 mAb) plus ipilimumab for locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Other findings highlight the synergistic activity of the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway with Lymphocyte Activation Gene-3 (Lag-3) or T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin-3 (Tim3), which together induce a more efficient tumor escape. In particular, their blockade through combinatorial treatments led to stronger immune responses against tumors in several mouse models, and recently, the combination of Nivolumab and anti-LAG-3 monoclonal antibody Relatlimab has been approved by FDA for metastatic melanoma. These data suggest that combinatorial treatments might be a valid approach to achieve a more efficient antitumor activity.
Furthermore, atezolizumab has entered the clinic, in combination with nab-paclitaxel, for locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, and several ongoing clinical studies are exploring the treatment effectiveness of immunotherapy combined with chemotherapeutic drugs and/or various other targeting agents.
This Special Issue invites original research articles and timely reviews on all aspects regarding combinatorial approaches for the immunotherapy of cancer, highlighting problems, solutions, and future directions in the development of new therapeutic combinatorial approaches.
Dr. Claudia De Lorenzo
Dr. Laura Cerchia
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- antibody-based therapeutics
- antitumor immunity
- active cancer targeting
- aptamer-based targeted therapies
- aptamer-based immunotherapeutics
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