With the development of biotechnology, immunotherapy has made significant progress and has become a novel cancer treatment. In particular, antibody therapies such as anti-CTLA-4 antibodies, anti-PD-1 antibodies, and anti-PD-L1antibodies have transformed certain cancers into chronic diseases.

Despite people having great expectations for cancer immunotherapy, the development of immunotherapy has several challenges. For example, response rates to immunotherapy are quite low in tumors that have limited T-cell infiltration. Tumor cells can also escape immune system surveillance and develop drug resistance due to reduced mutational load (TMB). In addition, the tumor immunosuppressive microenvironment can make the treatment ineffective. These difficulties have caused concerns for cancer immunotherapy. However, breakthroughs have been made in the recent years.

The first breakthrough was the combination therapy. The combination of the anti-CTLA-4 antibody Ipilimumab with the anti-PD-1 antibody Nivolumab has doubled the progression-free survival rate in metastatic melanoma patients. In addition, the combination of the anti-LAG-3 antibody Relatlimab and the anti-PD-1 antibody Nivolumab has increased progression-free survival by 50%, and reduced the side effects of the anti-CTLA-4 antibody by at least 50%. In fact, this combination strategy has revolutionized the first-line therapy for metastatic melanoma.

Second, the emergence of new targets has also opened an entirely new field for cancer immunotherapy. The combination of the anti-PD-L1 antibody Tecentrip with the antibody targeting the new target TIGIT Tiragolumab has become the first-line treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. In patients with PD-L1 Tumor Proportion Score (TPS) ≥ 50%, this new therapy has increased the median progression-free survival of 4.1 months for the anti-PD-L1 antibody monotherapy to 16.6 months, and reduced the death rate by 71%. In addition, several T cell therapies, NK cell therapy, macrophage cell therapy, and T-reg cell therapies are in the clinical trials and may soon provide exciting outcomes.

In view of the recent exciting development of cancer immunotherapy, the Chinese Antibody Society (CAS) and the CAS’s journal Antibody therapeutics together held the Chinese Antibody Society mAbTalkTM symposium with the title "Emerging Targets for Immuno-oncology" on Saturday, May 21, 2022, at 8:00 pm (US Eastern time) / Sunday, May 22 at 8:00 am (Beijing time). We invited several established academic experts in the field of immunotherapy to discuss various novel cancer immunotherapies. This symposium was broadcast live through the Zoom platform.