Novel strategies in immune checkpoint inhibitor drug development: How far are we from the paradigm shift?

Metastatic Kidney Cancer: Does the Location of the Metastases Matter? Moving towards Personalized Therapy for Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma

The management of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) has been revolutionized over the past two decades with several practice-changing treatments. Treatment for RCC often requires a multimodal approach: Local treatment, such as surgery or ablation, is typically recommended for patients with localized tumors, while stage IV cancers often require both local and systemic therapy. The treatment of advanced RCC heavily relies on immunotherapy and targeted therapy, which are highly contingent upon histological subtypes. Despite years of research on biomarkers for RCC, the standard of care is to choose systemic therapy based on the risk profile according to the International Metastatic RCC Database Consortium and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre models. However, many questions still need to be answered. Should we consider metastatic sites when deciding on treatment options for metastatic RCC? How do we choose between dual immunotherapy and combinations of immunotherapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitors? This review article aims to answer these unresolved questions surrounding the concept of personalized medicine.

Nucleolar protein TAAP1/C22orf46 confers pro-survival signaling in non-small cell lung cancer

Tumor cells subvert immune surveillance or lytic stress by harnessing inhibitory signals. Hence, bispecific antibodies have been developed to direct CTLs to the tumor site and foster immune-dependent cytotoxicity. Although applied with success, T cell-based immunotherapies are not universally effective partially because of the expression of pro-survival factors by tumor cells protecting them from apoptosis. Here, we report a CRISPR/Cas9 screen in human non-small cell lung cancer cells designed to identify genes that confer tumors with the ability to evade the cytotoxic effects of CD8+ T lymphocytes engaged by bispecific antibodies. We show that the gene C22orf46 facilitates pro-survival signals and that tumor cells devoid of C22orf46 expression exhibit increased susceptibility to T cell-induced apoptosis and stress by genotoxic agents. Although annotated as a non-coding gene, we demonstrate that C22orf46 encodes a nucleolar protein, hereafter referred to as "Tumor Apoptosis Associated Protein 1," up-regulated in lung cancer, which displays remote homologies to the BH domain containing Bcl-2 family of apoptosis regulators. Collectively, the findings establish TAAP1/C22orf46 as a pro-survival oncogene with implications to therapy.

Efficacy and adverse events of immune checkpoint inhibitors in esophageal cancer patients: Challenges and perspectives for immunotherapy

Esophageal cancer (EC) is the seventh most common cancer worldwide. Patients with EC have a generally poor prognosis mainly due to the lack of effective treatments. Cancer immunotherapy is a promising novel treatment option for EC. This literature review investigated the clinical efficacy of immunotherapy either alone or in combination with chemotherapy or targeted therapy. In addition, we analyzed the adverse events associated with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). In conclusion, ICIs increase the efficacy of EC treatments, thereby improving the outcomes of EC patients. The findings of this study may help enhance the response to immunotherapy, diminish toxicity, and thus eventually improve medical care for patients with EC.

Chemo-Immunotherapy Regimes for Recurrent or Metastatic Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: A Network Meta-Analysis and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

Introduction: In 2021, two phase III clinical trials confirmed that toripalimab or camrelizumab combined with gemcitabine and cisplatin (TGP or CGP) provide more benefits in the first-line treatment of R/M NPC than GP. Fortunately, TGP and CGP were recently approved as first-line treatments for cases experiencing R/M NPC by the China National Medical Products Administration in 2021. However, due to the high cost and variety of treatment options, the promotion of chemo-immunotherapeutics in the treatment of R/M NPC remains controversial. Therefore, we performed a cost-effectiveness assessment of the two newly approved treatment strategies to assess which treatments provide the greatest clinical benefits at a reasonable cost.

Methods: A cost-effectiveness analysis and network meta-analysis network meta-analysis was conducted based on the JUPITER-02 and CAPTAIN-first Phase 3 randomized clinical trials. A Markov model was expanded for the evaluation of the effectiveness and cost of TGP, CGP, and GP chemotherapy with a 10-years horizon and measured the health achievements in quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs), and life-years (LYs). We constructed a treatment strategy and other parameters based on two clinical trials and performed one-way and probabilistic sensitivity experiments for the evaluation of the uncertainty in the model.

Results: For the model of patients with treatment-R/M NPC, TGP was associated with a total cost of $48,525 and 2.778 QALYs (4.991 LYs), leading to an ICER of $15,103 per QALY ($10,321 per LY) compared to CGP. On comparing the GP chemotherapy, we found TGP and CGP incurred substantial health costs, resulting in ICERs of $19,726 per QALY and $20,438 per QALY, respectively. The risk of adverse events (AEs) and the price of the drugs had significant impacts on the ICER. At the assumed willingness-to-pay (WTP) threshold of $35,673 per QALY, there were approximately 75.8 and 68.5% simulations in which cost-effectiveness was achieved for TGP and CGP, respectively.

Conclusion: From the Chinese payer’s perspective, TGP is more possible to be a cost-effective regimen compared with CGP and GP for first-line treatment of patients with R/M NPC at a WTP threshold of $35,673 per QALY.

Durable response after discontinuation of pembrolizumab therapy for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma: a case report

Although it has recently been reported that immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) constitute effective treatment for solid tumors, the success rate in patients with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma is limited. We administered pembrolizumab to a patient as treatment for liver and lymph node metastases of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. The patient had abundant infiltration of programmed death ligand 1-positive macrophages, cytotoxic T cells (CD8-positive lymphocytes), and programmed death 1-positive lymphocytes as well as a high combined positive score of 33.1, high-frequency microsatellite instability, and mismatch repair deficiency. These characteristics are predictive biomarkers of the efficacy of ICIs. After pembrolizumab was administered four times (triweekly administration), the carbohydrate antigen 19-9 serum level fell within the normal range, and computed tomography revealed that the size of the metastatic liver tumors and enlarged hilar lymph node had markedly decreased. However, the patient developed pruritus and exanthema on the trunk and limbs after 14 administrations and was diagnosed with bullous pemphigoid. We discontinued pembrolizumab therapy and started treatment for bullous pemphigoid. Nine months after discontinuation of pembrolizumab therapy, the patient remains alive without tumor relapse. This patient had durable response even after discontinuation of pembrolizumab therapy for multiple metastases of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma.

Novel strategies in immune checkpoint inhibitor drug development: How far are we from the paradigm shift?

The development of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) represents a major milestone in immune-oncology. Over the years these agents have demonstrated efficacy in an increasing array of malignancies. Despite this success however, significant challenges remain. Novel approaches to both drug development and trial design are required to incorporate the unique pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of ICIs. Further, it has also been established that the benefit of ICIs is limited to only a subset of patients. The molecular interactions between native immune cells and tumorigenesis and progression represent an active area of biomarker research, and elucidating the mechanisms of response and resistance is crucial to develop rational trial designs for the next wave of immune-oncology (IO) clinical trials, particularly in patients with primary and/or acquired resistance. Efforts are now being made to integrate both biological and clinical information using novel multi-omic approaches which are now being developed to further elucidate the molecular signatures associated with IO treatment response and resistance and enable rational drug development and trial design processes. As such, precision IO and the ability to deliver patient-specific choices for ICI monotherapies or combination therapies has become an increasingly tangible goal. We herein describe the current landscape in ICI drug development and discuss the challenges and future directions in this exciting and evolving era in immune-oncology.