Exploring the landscape of immunotherapy approaches in sarcomas

Abstract

Sarcomas comprise a heterogenous group of malignancies, of more than 100 different entities, arising from mesenchymal tissue, and accounting for 1% of adult malignancies. Surgery, radiotherapy and systemic therapy constitute the therapeutic armamentarium against sarcomas, with surgical excision and conventional chemotherapy, remaining the mainstay of treatment for local and advanced disease, respectively. The prognosis for patients with metastatic disease is dismal and novel therapeutic approaches are urgently required to improve survival outcomes. Immunotherapy, is a rapidly evolving field in oncology, which has been successfully applied in multiple cancers to date. Immunomodulating antibodies, adoptive cellular therapy, cancer vaccines, and cytokines have been tested in patients with different types of sarcomas through clinical trials, pilot studies, retrospective and prospective studies. The results of these studies regarding the efficacy of different types of immunotherapies in sarcomas are conflicting, and the application of immunotherapy in daily clinical practice remains limited. Additional clinical studies are ongoing in an effort to delineate the role of immunotherapy in patients with specific sarcoma subtypes.

Stabilizing Tumor-Resident Mast Cells Restores T-Cell Infiltration and Sensitizes Sarcomas to PD-L1 Inhibition

“…Despite the recent advances in cancer research, the application of immunotherapy in daily clinical practice for the treatment of sarcoma remains limited. Clinical studies have yielded conflicting results demonstrating that blockade of the PD-1/PD-L1 axis can benefit only specific histologic subtypes ( 4 ), thus highlighting the need for alternative treatment strategies. Given the role of the TME in determining the behavior and response to treatment, the current study exploited the potential of stabilizing the intratumoral MCs using the common antihistamine drug ketotifen.…”

Osteosarcoma: Current Concepts and Evolutions in Management Principles

“…Immunotherapy, a rapidly evolving area in oncology, has been applied with success in several malignancies including melanoma [14], non-small cell lung cancer [15,16], and renal cell carcinoma [17]. Novel immunotherapy approaches, including immunomodulating antibodies, adoptive cellular therapy, and cancer vaccines, have been investigated in several clinical studies that enrolled patients with different types of sarcomas, including osteosarcoma [18][19][20][21]. Selected clinical studies which have evaluated different types of immunotherapies in patients with osteosarcoma are presented in Table 1.…”