title: Immunotherapy in colorectal cancer: What have we learned so far?
abstract: After decades of progress based on chemotherapy and targeted agents, patients with metastatic colorectal cancer still have low long-term survival, with more than 500,000 deaths occurring worldwide every year. Recent results showing clinical evidence of efficacy using immunotherapy in other types of tumors, such as melanoma and lung cancer, have also made this a viable therapy for evaluation in colorectal cancer in clinical trials. The development of cancer immunotherapies is progressing quickly, with a variety of technological approaches. This review summarizes the current status of clinical trials testing immunotherapy in colorectal cancer and discusses what has been learned based on previous results. Immunotherapy strategies, such as various models of vaccines, effector-cell therapy and checkpoint inhibitor antibodies, provide protection against progression for a limited subset of patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer. A better understanding of particular immune cell types and pathways in each patient is still needed. These findings will enable the development of novel biomarkers to select the appropriate subset of patients to be treated with a particular immunotherapy, and the tendencies determined from recent results can guide clinical practice for oncologists in this new therapeutic area and in the design of the next round of clinical trials.
authors.affiliation: Immunology Department, Marqués de Valdecilla Hospital-IDIBAL, Santander, Spain.
authors.forename: María
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sanchez-Castañón
authors.affiliation: Department of Health and Nutrition Biotechnology, Asian University, Taichung, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Tze-Kiong
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Er
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology, Hospital Donostia/Instituto Biodonostia, Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Hepáticas y Digestivas (CIBERehd) Universidad del País Vasco UPV/EHU, San Sebastián, Spain.
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bujanda
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology, Hospital Donostia/Instituto Biodonostia, Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Hepáticas y Digestivas (CIBERehd) Universidad del País Vasco UPV/EHU, San Sebastián, Spain; Division of Oncology Research, Schulze Center for Novel Therapeutics, College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States. Electronic address: martahvh1978@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Marta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Herreros-Villanueva
mesh_terms: D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D015179:Colorectal Neoplasms / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D007167:Immunotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D057285:Precision Medicine
keywords: Antibodies; Antigens; Colorectal cancer; Immunotherapy; Vaccines