title: Predictors of clinical response to immunotherapy with or without radiotherapy.
abstract: Success with recent immunotherapies has resulted in previously unattainable response rates, as well as durable responses in diseases with historically poor prognoses. The combination of radiation therapy and immunotherapy has been a recent area of active investigation, with exciting results in a subset of patients. However, patient characteristics predictive of probable benefit from therapy and clinically meaningful biomarkers indicative of the early development of an antitumor immune response have yet to be identified. What is needed is a better way to predict which patients are likely to benefit from therapy, which would allow those patients unlikely to benefit from immunotherapy to be spared potentially futile therapies, thereby avoiding unnecessary risks of toxicity and costly treatment. Here, we summarize the early data on predictors of clinical response to immunotherapy, and to immunotherapy in combination with radiation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford Cancer Center, Stanford University, 875 Blake Wilbur Drive, Stanford, CA 94305-5847 USA.
authors.forename: Susan M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Hiniker
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA USA.
authors.forename: Holden T
authors.initials: HT
authors.lastname: Maecker
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford Cancer Center, Stanford University, 875 Blake Wilbur Drive, Stanford, CA 94305-5847 USA.
authors.forename: Susan J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Knox
keywords: Abscopal effect; Biomarkers; Immunotherapy; Predictors of response; Radiation