Modern Immunotherapy for the Treatment of Advanced Gastrointestinal Cancers.

Overview

Since the first immune checkpoint-blocking monoclonal antibody was approved in the United States in 2011 for the treatment of advanced cancer, the rate of progress in the field of cancer immunotherapy has only accelerated. This mode of cancer treatment has yielded durable complete responses in a subset of patients with metastatic cancer for whom no other treatment was effective. It is a class of therapy that is not inherently cancer type-specific, and investigators are only beginning to understand why some cancers, such as melanoma, are more sensitive to immunotherapy than others. Although immunotherapy is not yet approved for the treatment of gastrointestinal cancers, it is already clear that many gastrointestinal cancers can be sensitive to it. We will review recent clinical trial results demonstrating this, and offer our perspective on the role that immunotherapy might play in the treatment of advanced gastrointestinal malignancies in the years ahead.