Recent advances in precision medicine and immuno-oncology have led to highly specific and efficacious cancer therapies such as monoclonal antibodies and immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). This book provides an up-to-date overview of advances in the field of immuno-oncology. Chapters cover such topics as ICIs and how they mount a robust immune response against cancer cells as well as the response of ICIs to treatment predictive biomarkers and their potential immune-related adverse events (irAEs). Additionally, the book includes a comprehensive review of the powerful FDA-approved therapeutic agent doxorubicin, highlighting the molecular mechanisms behind doxorubicin's drug resistance and critical side effects.

Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors - New Insights and Recent Progress explores a vast array of subjects related to immune checkpoint inhibitors and presents novel insights in this emerging field. Chapters address such topics as mechanistic approaches of emerging immune checkpoint inhibitors, their role in clinical and pre-clinical trials, the manipulation of the system by immune-related adverse events that hinder the utility of these immune molecules, and the predictive and prognostic aspects of these molecules as biomarkers of response in immunotherapy. The book is useful for students, clinicians, and scientists to gain updated information on managing patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors.

In recent years, significant progress has been made in the clinical development and use of various types of cancer immunotherapy, all of which rely on the immune system to fight cancer. The majority of new cancer drug applications submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are for immunotherapies or combinations involving immunotherapies. One type of immunotherapy is an immune checkpoint inhibitor. Cells in the human body have proteins that regulate the immune system response to foreign invaders (e.g., cancer cells, microorganisms). However, cancer cells can coopt these "checkpoint" proteins and thwart the immune system's ability to recognize and attack cancer cells. To help promote an immune response to cancer, researchers have developed immune checkpoint inhibitors that enable T-cells to recognize cancer cells as foreign and to prevent deactivation of an immune system response. To examine the challenges and opportunities to develop combination cancer therapies that include immune checkpoint inhibitors, the National Cancer Policy Forum held a workshop on July 16â€"17, 2018, in Washington, DC. This workshop convened stakeholders with a broad range of expertise, including cancer researchers, clinicians, patient advocates, and representatives from industry, academia, and government. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

In this book we provide insights into liver – cancer and immunology. Experts in the field provide an overview over fundamental immunological questions in liver cancer and tumorimmunology, which form the base for immune based approaches in HCC, which gain increasing interest in the community due to first promising results obtained in early clinical trials. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third most common cause of cancer related death in the United States. Treatment options are limited. Viral hepatitis is one of the major risk factors for HCC, which represents a typical “inflammation-induced” cancer. Immune-based treatment approaches have revolutionized oncology in recent years. Various treatment strategies have received FDA approval including dendritic cell vaccination, for prostate cancer as well as immune checkpoint inhibition targeting the CTLA4 or the PD1/PDL1 axis in melanoma, lung, and kidney cancer. Additionally, cell based therapies (adoptive T cell therapy, CAR T cells and TCR transduced T cells) have demonstrated significant efficacy in patients with B cell malignancies and melanoma. Immune checkpoint inhibitors in particular have generated enormous excitement across the entire field of oncology, providing a significant benefit to a minority of patients.