Obesity and cancer immunotherapy toxicity

Drug development For clinicians For researchers Immuno-oncology Journal articles Opinion
Drug development refers to the process of bringing a new drug to the market, involving stages such as lead compound discovery, preclinical research, clinical trial and regulatory approval.

Within the past decade the usage of cancer immunotherapy has gained momentum, achieving successes within various advanced-staged malignancies and is beginning to be explored as a primary therapeutic rather than secondary to traditional cytoreductive therapies. Immunotherapeutic antitumor approaches have included systemic stimulatory therapies, blocking checkpoint inhibitory pathways, direct induction of T-cell stimulatory pathways and adoptive cell transfer strategies, among others [1]. However, the wide-spread application of immunotherapy has been limited by the induction of dose-limiting, and often times life-threatening, immune-related adverse reaction events (irAEs). These reactions are best exemplified by stimulatory systemic therapies, such as IL-2 and high-dose IFN, that can result in cytokine-release syndrome, multiorgan failure and require their usage to be limited to highly specialized centers capable of providing continuous care [2].

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