Potential Biomarkers for the Efficacy of PD-1-PD-L Blockade in Cancer.

A decade ago, immune checkpoint blockade emerged as a major breakthrough in oncology, proposing a novel approach by which immune brakes could be released to enhance antitumor responses. Despite apparently modest improvement of the median duration of response, a spectacular doubling of long-term responses as compared to the available standard of care was seen, for instance, in metastatic melanoma. It soon became obvious that the percentage of patients responding to these novel approaches is relatively small, and the importance of an accurate prediction of responders became more and more clear. Strong predictive markers would allow for the administration of immune checkpoint blocker therapy to the patients most likely to benefit from it, and sparing the potential non-responders of a treatment which is far from innocuous, being associated with significant side-effects and, not least, an important price tag. A number of potential response predictors have already been investigated and partly validated, but they do not cover the major unmet need encountered in the current clinical setting. Here, we review biomarkers for immune checkpoint blockade efficacy, either clinically validated and currently in use, or which have been proposed as candidates and are currently under investigation.

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© 2021 Grecea et al.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Prof. Dr. Mihnea Zdrenghea received clinical study funding from GlaxoSmithKline, personal fees from Amgen, non-financial support from Astra Zeneca, personal fees from Bristol Myers Squibb, personal fees from Novartis, personal fees from Janssen, personal fees from Pfizer, grants and personal fees from Roche, personal fees from Sanofi, personal fees from Servier and personal fees from Takeda during the conduct of the study. The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.