The last decade of immunotherapy progress was based on decades of prior research, including other forms of immunotherapy.
Until recent years, cancer treatment revolved around surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. But the FDA approval of ipilimumab (Yervoy) in 2011 led to a fourth leg of that treatment stool: immunotherapy. This enabled new treatment paradigms, sometimes with shocking levels of success.
The types of immunotherapy treatments available are proliferating, with approved immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and cellular therapies like chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells as well as other modalities in the research and discovery phases. Some even include more established approaches like vaccines that are being revisited with new information and iterations.
The last decade of immunotherapy progress was based on decades of prior research, including other forms of immunotherapy. The Bacillus Calmette-Gurin vaccine, used to prevent tuberculosis for a century, has also been used as an immunotherapy to treat nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer since 1990.1 And rituximab (Rituxan), a monoclonal antibody therapy approved in 1997 for B-cell malignancies, is seen by some as an early immunotherapy as well.2
What many clinicians think of in terms of immunotherapy, however, are treatments targeting CTLA-4 and PD-1/PD-L1 pathways, brought from the bench by James P. Allison, PhD, and Tasuku Honjo, PhD, respectively, leading to a Nobel Prize awarded jointly to them in 2018.3
Immune responses are tightly controlled by T cells, and these T cells have on/off switches that help control their responses, according to Padmanee Sharma, MD, PhD, a professor in the Department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology in the Division of Cancer Medicine and the scientific director of the James P. Allison Institute at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Previously, she said, clinicians were not aware of the off switches. Allison showed that CTLA-4 was an inhibitory pathway and that by blocking it, the T cells could stay longer to eradicate the tumors.
With 8 ICIs approved for immunotherapy in hematological and solid tumors,4 researchers are not only investigating newer forms of therapy, but also combining them to fi nd more effective and durable treatments and introducing them into earlier lines of treatment (TIMELINE). Current research is also attempting to predict who will respond to which therapy based on current and emerging biomarkers.
Ipilimumab, which kicked off the current era of cancer immunotherapy treatment with FDA approval in 2011, targets CTLA-4 for newly diagnosed or previously treated unresectable or metastatic melanoma.5 Ipilimumab blocks CTLA-4, removing its inhibitory signals. This allows the T cells to activate and launch an immune response to the tumors antigens.
CTLA-4 is basically the fi rst inhibitory pathway that comes up on the T cells, Sharma said. CTLA-4 is a member of an immunoglobulin-related receptor family responsible for some immune regulation aspects of T cells.6 It is thought to regulate T-cell proliferation mostly in lymph nodes, early in an immune response, by having an inhibitory role.7
What ipilimumab really did and what the immune checkpoint inhibitors really did is they opened up this whole different way to approach the immune system, Elizabeth Buchbinder, MD, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, said. Ipilimumab provided amazing durable responses in patients with melanoma with widely metastatic disease, some of whom were alive 10 years later, she said.
The PD-1 and PD-L1 blockades build on ipilimumabs success. Like CTLA-4, PD-1 is a negative regulator of T-cell immune function, inhibiting the target to increase immune system activation. PD-1 suppresses T cells mostly in the peripheral tissues.7 As of November 2021, 8 ICIs have been approved that target CTLA-4, PD-1, and PD-L1 pathways and treat 18 types of cancer.3
AntiPD-1 inhibitors
The percentage of people who benefi tted from ipilimumab was on the low side, Buchbinder said, with only an 11% response rate and 20% of people doing well long term in clinical trials. With PD-1 inhibition, however, there was approximately a 40% response rate and many more patients doing well long term, as demonstrated in clinical trials. So [PD-1 inhibition is] both far more effective and also less toxic, Buchbinder said.
When choosing an agent in the PD-1 class, we dont need to differentiate them. Theyre all antiPD-1, Sharma explained. There arent any data to indicate that patients will respond any differently to pembrolizumab [Keytruda] vs nivolumab [Opdivo]. The mechanism of action for both drugs [is] exactly the same.
Instead, clinicians should consider the FDA approvals for each drugs indications and combinations. But from a scientific standpoint, theres no distinguishing between [them], Sharma said.
AntiPD-L1 inhibitors
PD-1 and PD-L1 targeting drugs were found to work beyond melanoma and kidney cancer, the early indications for treatments targeting the CTLA-4 pathway, Buchbinder said. That was a huge opening up of this fi eld to all of these other cancers, like lung cancer, head and neck cancer, GI [gastrointestinal] cancer, breast [cancer], and beyond, she said.
Before receiving these immunotherapies, patients may need to show PD-1 or PD-L1 expression, although this may not identify all patients who can benefi t from the treatments. Researchers continue to try to identify additional and better biomarkers to indicate which patients may respond.13
In March, the FDA approved the newest ICI, nivolumab and relatlimab-rmbw (Opdualag), for adult and pediatric patients (12 years and older) with unresectable or metastatic melanoma. 3 Nivolumab is a PD-1 inhibitor, and relatlimab blocks LAG3 proteins on immune cells. It is being tested in a lot of other tumors, Buchbinder noted.
Another target in the discovery phase is T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain 3, which is a checkpoint receptor expressed by many immune cells and leukemic stem cells.14 It is activated by several ligands and is being tested in different cancer types.
Also in clinical trials are tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) that recognize cancer cells as abnormal, entering the tumor to kill the cells. TILs already recognize the targets because they originate from the tumor itself.15 Although they need to be expanded, they are not the same as CAR T cells, which must be engineered to recognize the targets.
In addition, older therapies are experiencing a resurgence, with research underway to make interleukin 2 (IL-2) help cytokines function better. That work is trying to optimize what those cytokines do in the body and the immune system, Buchbinder said. There are so many areas where the goal of the therapy is activation of the immune system.
One of these areas includes a return to vaccines. In earlier vaccine therapy, We had no idea that while we were giving therapy to turn on the cells, we were also rapidly turning off the cells because an on switch will automatically drive an off switch for the immune system, Sharma said. The yin and the yang of the immune response is very important to understand because when the immune response is driven in one direction, it will always try to control itself. With that in mind, newer vaccines might work better if given in combination with an antiCTLA-4, for example, to block the inhibitory pathways, she said.
Vaccines are taking many forms, including the mRNA vaccine used for COVID-19, peptide vaccines that include a tiny bit of protein that is expected to be expressed on the tumor surface, and vaccines constructed from dendritic cells, which stimulate T cells, Buchbinder said.
There are also viral therapies injected directly into tumor vaccines, such as talimogene laherparepvec (Imlygic) approved in 2015 for the treatment of some patients with metastatic melanoma that cannot be surgically removed.16 It is a is a modifi ed herpes virus directly injected into the tumor to bring about a local immune response, Buchbinder said.
According to Sharma, approximately 60 targets are currently being evaluated for immunotherapy development.
The FDA has approved 2 CAR T-cell therapies, both in 2017: tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) for patients 25 years and younger with relapsed B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia17 and axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta) for the treatment of adult patients with large B-cell lymphoma that is refractory to fi rst-line chemoimmunotherapy or that relapses within 12 months of fi rst-line chemoimmunotherapy.18 These treatments involve collecting T cells from the patient and engineering them to express CARs that recognize the patients cancer cells. The cells are then enlarged and infused back into the patient, where they can target the antigen- expressing cancer cells. CARs have been shown to greatly improve clinical response and disease remission in some patients.19
I think CAR T cells are clearly building on the concept that T cells are the soldiers of immune response. They are basically engineering the cell to have an antibody that recognizes a specifi c antigen, Sharma said, adding that its important to ensure the targeted antigen is part of the cancer.
CAR T cells have had limited effectiveness in treating solid tumors, given the low T-cell infiltration and immunosuppressive environment that challenges the immune system from successfully reaching and killing solid tumor cancer cells.20
Natural killer (NK) cells are another cell type being researched to attempt tumor eradication, and this therapy is in the early stages, according to Sharma. CAR NK cells can be generated from allogenic donors, making them more attractive as off the shelf treatments compared with CAR T cells, which are collected from the patient. As of early 2021, more than 500 CAR T-cell trials and 17 CAR T-cell/NK-cell trials were in the works globally.21
A major consideration when choosing any treatment, including immunotherapies, is the adverse event (AE) profile. Immunotherapy drugs have different AEs than oncology treatments like chemotherapy or radiation. [With immunotherapy,] what we see is infl ammation because youre turning on the immune system in such a powerful way, Sharma said. Inflammatory reactions include a skin rash or dermatitis, infl ammation in the colon (colitis and diarrhea), and/or infl ammation in the lung with pneumonitis. Clinicians are now aware of these AEs and can monitor them closely, stopping therapy if needed to control them before they become severe, Sharma said.
Toxicities with ipilimumab can be severe, and patients requiring hospital admission might need high-dose steroids, Buchbinder noted. Common AEs for the CTLA-4 inhibitor are typically GI related, including diarrhea, colitis, and hepatitis. Some patients may experience fatigue or a small rash, but most generally make it through treatment with minimal AEs.
The stronger AEs with ipilimumab can be seen from a trial comparing ipilimumab plus nivolumab to nivolumab and relatlimab. Almost 60% of patients experienced AEs with the ipilimumab combination vs 20% in the latter group.17
PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibition typically involve AEs that cause lung issues rather than GI. The types of organ systems affected by immunotherapy AEs can vary based upon which checkpoint inhibitor you use but in some ways, the mechanism by which these occur is very similar, Buchbinder said. Its all an overactivation of the immune system leading to infl ammation in an organ, and there are very few organs that we have not seen toxicity from immunotherapy.
Buchbinder noted that cellular therapies can cause more severe AEs, such as cytokine release syndrome (CRS). Patients can get very sick very quickly, she said, because the therapies given with the cellsincluding the chemotherapy given before and the IL-2 given aftercause most of the AEs. With a lot of the injection therapies, the AEs are related to delivery method, like injection-site issues, but there are also potential systemic AEs like fever, chills, and reactions someone would get to a virus. Its really a huge range in terms of the different [adverse] effects, Buchbinder said.
CRS is the most common AE of CAR T-cell therapy, and it is caused by large numbers of T cells activating, which releases inflammatory cytokines. Although this demonstrates that the therapy is working, it can cause worrisome symptoms. The CRS and the related neurotoxicity can be treated with tocilizumab (Actemra).
One question in the immunotherapy world is whether the development of immune-related AEs predicts a positive or negative response to treatment. With melanoma, we think the data have been very tricky, Buchbinder said. Early trials appeared to show a higher response rate for patients who developed severe symptoms, but as trials developed, that signal was not always there. I think the overall impression is that yes, severe AEs are associated with a better response, she said. A cosmetic AE that clinicians who treat melanoma are excited to see, she said, is vitiligo. It suggests that the immune system is attacking normal melanocytes and that it is attacking cancer cells as well. Those patients generally do far better than patients who dont get vitiligo.
A meta-analysis of 30 studies on the topic, including 4971 individuals, showed that patients who developed immune-related AEs experienced an overall survival benefi t and a progression-free survival benefi t using ICI therapy compared with those who did not. The authors stated that more studies are needed and that the results are controversial.22
Melanoma has been the proving ground for ICIs, Buchbinder said, But now the bar is higher in terms of immunotherapy.
ICIs are now being tested in more immuneresistant tumors. Although there are huge hurdles in terms of some cancers where its going to be hard for immune therapy to do muchlike pancreatic cancer or prostate cancerthere are still diseases where theres opportunity and a possibility that the correct approach or combination might get to some great therapy for those diseases, Buchbinder said
Immunotherapies are being combined with conventional therapies to better integrate treatment. We dont see cancer as a death sentence anymore, Sharma said. We really do see a lot of hope, [and patients with cancer] should be encouraged to discuss immunotherapy with their physician either in a clinical trial or an FDA-approved agent. If you do have a response, its a pretty phenomenal response.
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10 Years of Immunotherapy: Advances, Innovations, and Better Patient Outcomes - Targeted Oncology
