Immunotherapy for Central Nervous System Tumors: Current and Future Directions

Dear Colleagues,

The field of brain tumor immunotherapy has been rapidly developing owing to advancements in clinical, translational, and basic research. Next-generation sequencing efforts continue to reveal new immunologic targets in the form of neoantigens and tumor-associated antigens. Basic research findings on T-cell biology continues to identify new promising checkpoint pathways, and the immune system’s contribution to oncolytic viral therapy has gained broad acceptance. However, clinical trials continue to be disappointing with failures in almost every prominent trial. Multiple factors likely contribute to these failed trials including immunosuppressive cells within the tumors, the expression of checkpoint molecules, and a relatively low mutational burden. A multidisciplinary approach to developing rational and effective combination therapies and to identifying which patients are likely to respond to each therapy is necessary. This Special Issue will focus on novel findings in basic, translational, and clinical research advancing the field of brain tumor immuno-oncology. We also welcome topics related to biomarkers, novel imaging approaches, and the analysis of correlative analyses of clinical trials. This Special Issue will present novel recent findings and an exploration of where the field is moving in developing immunotherapies for central nervous system tumors.

Prof. Gary Kohanbash
Guest Editor

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• Primary and metastatic CNS tumors
• Tumor-associated macrophages
• MDSCs
• T-regulatory cells
• oncolytic viral therapy
• vaccines
• checkpoint pathway inhibitors
• T-cell therapies
• CAR-T cells