Abstract
The immune system has been recognized to interact with cancer for more than a century. According to the hypothesis of the immune surveillance, the immune system could be able to recognize and reject cancer cells as being foreign exactly in the same way that it fights transplanted organs and microbial agents. If in oncology traditional therapies, such as chemotherapy, kinase inhibitors, surgery, and radiation therapy, directly target cancer cells, immunotherapy indirectly fights the tumor by the activation of antitumor immunity. In the last years, immunotherapy is found to be an effective therapeutic strategy in several cancers. Despite the clinical success of antibodies against the immune regulators such as the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4), the programmed death receptor 1 (PD-1), or its ligand (PD-L1), unfortunately only a part of patients with cancer exhibit durable response, suggesting that a deeper knowledge of cancer immunity is needed. The definition of immune profiles able to predict responses to immunotherapy is also a crucial unmet need.
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Zucali, P.A. (2020). Immunotherapy in Oncology. In: Lopci, E., Fanti, S. (eds) Atlas of Response to Immunotherapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31113-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31113-1_1
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