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Cancer is the result of uncontrolled proliferation of cancerous cells which evade the host immune surveillance in a way of upregulating immune checkpoint inhibition pathways. While the development immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have largely reversed the situation and becoming one of the most effective therapies in treating cancers. There are a few ICI drugs being approved for treating various types of cancers which are mainly target two immune checkpoint inhibition pathways: CTLA-4 pathway and PD-1 pathway. Not only with the consideration of the clinical significance site of ICI drugs, but it is also important to consider the challenges of these drugs especially when it comes to drug toxicity and drug resistance problem in order to maximize the drug efficacy by enhancing anti-tumor activity and increase cancer patients’ overall survival in a long term. In addition, since different cancer types have varied level of response to ICI drugs, it brings up the importance of critically evaluating the significance and limitations of ICI drugs for clinical use. This study focused on two types of ICIs: anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1 and gave a critical analysis of each drug on treating specific cancers: metastatic melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) respectively. Anti-CTLA4 drugs like ipilimumab has shown to be effective in boost melanoma regression and Anti-PD-1 drugs like nivolumab and pembrolizumab has shown to elicit anti-tumor activity in NSCLC. However, both types of ICIs have shown a certain level of limitations, which is worth further adjustment or coming up with combinational therapy to maximize the efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade therapy for cancer.
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