Onkologie. 2020:14(5):205-212 | DOI: 10.36290/xon.2020.075

Biomarkers for Predicting Response to Immunotherapy with Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors

Simona Bořilová^1,2, Peter Grell^1,2, Ondřej Bílek^1,2, Igor Kiss^1,2

¹ Klinika komplexní onkologické péče, Masarykův onkologický ústav, Brno

² Lékařská fakulta Masarykovy univerzity, Brno

Despite the very promising therapeutic results of checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), only 20-40 % of patients benefit from this treatment. Since the introduction of ICIs into daily practice, predictors have been constantly investigated to avoid unnecessary toxicity and to reduce the financial expenses. Nowadays, we use PD-L1 expression to predict the response to anti-PD1 / PD-L1 immunotherapy. However, its usefulness is currently debatable because of its varied definition of threshold, and spatial/temporal heterogeneity Another approved predictor is microsatellite instability. Although it is a strong predictor for colorectal cancer, cannot be considered a completely tumor agnostic predictor. Other promising predictors mentioned in our article are now under investigation and testing (e.g. intestinal microbiome, peripheral blood immunoprofiling, or tumor infiltrating lymphocytes). Due to the complexity of the immune antitumor response, it may not be possible to identify a single biomarker that reflects all stages of the immune antitumor response, regardless of the histopathological type of tumor.

Keywords: immune checkpoint inhibitors, anti PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies, anti CTLA-4 antibodies, immune biomarkers.

Published: November 19, 2020  Show citation