Cancer immunotherapy full speed ahead

The field of immunotherapy is celebrating with well-justified pride on the recent regulatory approvals of PD-1/PD-L1 blocking agents for a number of new malignant tumor indications, as well as of the adoptive transfer of CAR-T cells gene-targeted to CD19, which are amazingly efficacious for the treatment of children with refractory acute lymphoid leukemia as well as adult patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma.

Patients with advanced metastatic tumors of many kinds are not only responding but also achieve long-lasting remission. Such clinical efficacy results are certainly unprecedented in oncology but, even if dazzled, we must move on. In the January issue of Annals of Oncology, Shalabi et al. provide an analysis of the magnitude of the global immunotherapy effort with a comprehensive survey of public data estimating the number of clinical trials, agents and the investment volumes.

This is to be taken only as an indication of the prominence and priority of the cancer immunotherapy field in both academia and industry

CITA DEL ARTÍCULO  Ann Oncol. 2017 Dec 1;28(suppl_12):xii1-xii2.
doi: 10.1093/annonc/mdx739