Innovative immunotherapy targeting at PD-1/PD-L1 signaling pathway: mechanism, efficacy and safety analysis of monotherapy and combination therapies in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treatment

Abstract

Lung cancer remains a leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide with a poor prognosis. Conventional therapies are most commonly used in all kinds of treatment because of their relatively high efficacy in killing tumor cells at first. However, as treatment time increases, this efficacy would gradually decrease, along with unavoidable and growing resistance and multiple and serious side effects. At this point, immunotherapy, including anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1 antibodies, renders an innovative and more effective way to take advantage of our own immune response to kill cancer cells. It is confirmed to have greater efficacy and safety of immunotherapy over conventional therapies in various cancer treatments, including non-small cell cancer. Combining conventional therapies can also lead to synergistic effects in controlling and killing cancer cells. The purpose of this summary is to verify the efficacy and safety of immune checkpoint inhibitor monotherapy and the synergistic effects of combination therapy with chemotherapy and radiotherapy. This review will introduce the mechanism, efficacy, and safety of immune checkpoint inhibitor monotherapy and combination therapies with chemotherapy and radiotherapy via a summary and interpretation of related preclinical and clinical trials.