Cancer Chemo-Immunotherapeutics

Cancer chemo-immunotherapeutics has evolved with a strategic slogan - ‘marrying chemotherapy with immunotherapy’ - in order to optimize the chance for cure. The ultimate goal is to execute a ‘two hit’ impact, able on the one hand to mount a robust anti-tumour immune response, and on the other hand, selectively eradicate tumour growth and progression. Tremendous progress has been, and being, made in this regard by testing various ‘chemotherapy-immunotherapy’ drug combinations in the clinic, and also implementing multiple pharmacological and biological interventions against fundamental regulatory pathways involved in tumour development, progression, and tumour immune escape mechanisms. This chapter discusses the current ‘chemotherapy-immunotherapy’ combinations in clinical studies/trials, as well as the pharmacological manipulation of host-tumour cell interactions mapping the road ahead to a novel trend/concept of ‘two hit’ chemo-immunotherapeutics. At the end, we also discuss the patents issued and recent patent applications stating the novel chemoimmunotherapy methods with diverse interventional combinations, some of which produce synergistic anti-tumour effects, to treat multiple advanced cancers.

Keywords: ARG, Cancer, Chemotherapy, Chemo-immunotherapy, Cancer vaccines, CIK cells, CTLA4, Cytokine, FOLFOX, GVAX, IDO, Immune suppression, Immuno-oncology, Kinase inhibition, mAbs, mTOR, MAPK, PKA, R-CHOP, TroVax^®.