Combined Immune Checkpoint Blockade

There are very few tumor types for which chemotherapy regimens are regularly curative; notable exceptions include testicular cancer and Hodgkin's lymphoma. In both cases combination chemotherapy approaches are required. Thus, it would seem only logical that combination immunotherapy approaches will be required to induce long-term remissions in the majority of cancer patients. Immune checkpoint blockade can be combined with several other interventions, including radiation therapy, chemotherapy and cancer vaccines. However, the observation that T cells that are rendered not-responsive or "exhausted" by recognition of tumor antigens express multiple non-overlapping checkpoint molecules suggests that immunotherapy approaches in which multiple checkpoint molecules are blocked may be particularly active in the clinic. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.