Journal of Chemotherapy

Cancer immunotherapy has become an emerging pharmacological treatment of cancer, being characterized by substantial efficacy in various tumor types. Innovative immunotherapeutic strategies include immune checkpoint inhibition by monoclonal antibodies interfering with specific membrane receptors of immune cells or with their ligands, bispecific and multispecific monoclonal antibodies, adoptive cellular immunotherapy, and cancer vaccines.

More recently, immune checkpoint inhibitors have been used with clinical success in combination with other anticancer therapies, including cancer vaccines. Engineered CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T cells have shown great efficacy in the treatment of patients with refractory haematologic malignancies. Various bispecific T cell recruiting antibodies have been developed and display superior therapeutic effects to those of classical monoclonal antibodies.
Immunotherapies are however endowed with high grade toxicity that may limit their clinical application. Also, despite clinical benefits obtained with current cancer immunotherapies, many cancer patients still do not respond or respond poorly. Various mechanisms of primary and secondary resistance drive lack of response to immunotherapies. The identification of additional biomarkers that may be predictive of sensitivity and resistance is needed to direct current immunotherapies and to develop new ones.

This special collection of open access articles will cover all the relevant aspects of the discovery, development, and clinical application of immune checkpoint inhibitors, bispecific and multispecific monoclonal antibodies, engineered CAR T cells and other immune cells, and cancer vaccines with the aim of stimulating the discussion among the scientific community and provide the basis for further advancements in this field.

Specific topics of interest:

• Pharmacological targets for cancer immunotherapeutics
• Immune checkpoints inhibitors
• Bispecific and multispecific antibodies
• Adoptive cellular immunotherapy
• Engineered CAR T cell therapy
• Cancer vaccines
• Design and development of immunotherapeutics
• Preclinical and clinical pharmacology of immunotherapeutics
• Tumor resistance to immunotherapeutics
• Pharmacological biomarkers for immunotherapeutics
• Immunotherapeutics in cancer treatment
• Immunotherapeutics pharmacokinetics
• Immunotherapeutics drug interactions
• Immunotherapeutics adverse effects
• Pharmacovigilance and pharmacoeconomics of immunotherapeutics

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