Hogan Sabrina A, Levesque Mitchell P, Cheng Phil F
Department of Dermatology, UniversitätsSpital Zürich, Gloriastrasse, Zurich, Switzerland.
Faculty of Medicine, Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
Front Oncol. 2018 May 29;8:178. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2018.00178. eCollection 2018.
The recent emergence of cancer immunotherapies initiated a significant shift in the clinical management of metastatic melanoma. Prior to 2011, melanoma patients only had palliative treatment solutions which offered little to no survival benefit. In 2018, with immunotherapy, melanoma patients can now contemplate durable or even complete remission. Treatment with novel immune checkpoint inhibitors, anti-cytotoxic T-lymphocyte protein 4 and anti-programmed cell death protein 1, clearly result in superior median and long-term survivals compared to standard chemotherapy; however, more than half of the patients do not respond to immune checkpoint blockade. Currently, clinicians do not have any effective way to stratify melanoma patients for immunotherapies. Research is now focusing on identifying biomarkers which could predict a patient's response prior treatment initiation (or very early during treatment course), in order to maximize therapeutic efficacy, avoid unnecessary costs, and undesirable heavy side effects for the patient. Given the rapid developments in this field and the translational potential for some of the biomarkers, we will summarize the current state of biomarker research for immunotherapy in melanoma, with an emphasis on omics technologies such as next-generation sequencing and mass cytometry (CyTOF).
近期癌症免疫疗法的出现，使转移性黑色素瘤的临床管理发生了重大转变。2011年之前，黑色素瘤患者只有姑息治疗方案，几乎没有生存获益。2018年，有了免疫疗法，黑色素瘤患者现在可以期待持久甚至完全缓解。与标准化疗相比，使用新型免疫检查点抑制剂、抗细胞毒性T淋巴细胞蛋白4和抗程序性细胞死亡蛋白1进行治疗，明显能带来更高的中位生存期和长期生存率；然而，超过一半的患者对免疫检查点阻断无反应。目前，临床医生没有任何有效的方法对黑色素瘤患者进行免疫疗法分层。现在的研究重点是识别生物标志物，这些标志物可以在治疗开始前（或治疗过程的极早期）预测患者的反应，以最大限度地提高治疗效果，避免不必要的费用，并避免给患者带来不良的严重副作用。鉴于该领域的快速发展以及一些生物标志物的转化潜力，我们将总结黑色素瘤免疫疗法生物标志物研究的现状，重点介绍下一代测序和质谱流式细胞术（CyTOF）等组学技术。
