Principles for next generation anti-cancer immunotherapy

The clinical success of immune chechpoint blockade with anty cytotoxic T-lymphocyte associated antigen (CTLA)-4 and anti-programmed death (P-D)-1/PD-ligand (L)1 inhibitor in melanoma and other canceers has encouraged increasing development of other immunotherapies, particularly monoclonal antibodies with other immune targets, adoptive cell transfer and vaccines. Nowadays immunotherapy is considered the fourth pillar in the treatment against cancer together with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. After the first approval of ipilimumab in 2011 for the metastatic melanoma patient, several additional successes were reached in other cancer diseases like those of lung, kidney, head and neck, urotherlial, bladder, colon with microsatellite instability, Hodgkin lymphoma, etc. The common characteristic of immunotherapy is the possibility to reach a long-term benefit making chronic a bad disease. In the next future combination strategies and innovative approaches could increase the efficacy of such strategy.