Tumor Immunotherapy Directed at PD-1
Menées sur des patients atteints d'un cancer avancé de différents organes, ces deux études évaluent la toxicité et l'activité anti-tumorale d'un anticorps bloquant PD-1, un récepteur inhibiteur exprimé par les lymphocytes T, et d'un anticorps bloquant l'un de ses deux ligands (PD-L1)
The treatment of cancer by harnessing immune responses has long been pursued. Efforts to turn on the immune system against cancers with inactivated tumor vaccines or intratumor injections of bacterial products to induce local inflammation and recruit an antitumor immune response have led to anecdotal successes. Increasing knowledge about how the immune system is activated, coupled with advances in recombinant DNA technology, has allowed the clinical testing of immune-stimulating cytokines such as interferons and interleukins. These trials have led to a low frequency of durable tumor responses in selected cancers such as melanoma and renal-cell carcinoma at the expense of serious toxic effects. The finding that dendritic cells play a central role in orchestrating a T-cell response to cancer has resulted in multiple clinical trials of dendritic-cell–based vaccines. These studies again provided evidence of occasional tumor responses in a minority of patients...
New England Journal of Medicine , éditorial en libre accès, 2011