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Review
. 2024 Aug 9;22(1):751.
doi: 10.1186/s12967-024-05552-6.

Strategies to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of anti-PD-1 antibody, anti-PD-L1 antibody and anti-CTLA-4 antibody in cancer therapy

Xin Su #  1   2 , Jian Li #  1   2 , Xiao Xu #  1   2 , Youbao Ye  1   2 , Cailiu Wang  1   2 , Guanglong Pang  1   2 , Wenxiu Liu  1   2 , Ang Liu  1   2 , Changchun Zhao  1   2 , Xiangyong Hao  3
Affiliations
Review

Strategies to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of anti-PD-1 antibody, anti-PD-L1 antibody and anti-CTLA-4 antibody in cancer therapy

Xin Su et al. J Transl Med. .

Abstract

Although immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD-1 antibody, anti-PD-L1 antibody, and anti-CTLA-4 antibody) have displayed considerable success in the treatment of malignant tumors, the therapeutic effect is still unsatisfactory for a portion of patients. Therefore, it is imperative to develop strategies to enhance the effect of these ICIs. Increasing evidence strongly suggests that the key to this issue is to transform the tumor immune microenvironment from a state of no or low immune infiltration to a state of high immune infiltration and enhance the tumor cell-killing effect of T cells. Therefore, some combination strategies have been proposed and this review appraise a summary of 39 strategies aiming at enhancing the effectiveness of ICIs, which comprise combining 10 clinical approaches and 29 foundational research strategies. Moreover, this review improves the comprehensive understanding of combination therapy with ICIs and inspires novel ideas for tumor immunotherapy.

Keywords: Cancer therapy; Combination therapy; Immune checkpoint inhibitors; Immunotherapy; Tumor microenvironment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
A summary of therapeutic strategies to enhance the effect of anti-PD-1antibody, anti-PD-L1 antibody and anti-CTLA-4 antibody. These strategies are divided into those that have been applied in clinical practice and those that are under preclinical investigation. EGFR-TKI: epidermal growth factor receptor‑tyrosine kinase inhibitor; ICIs: immune checkpoint inhibitors; CDKs inhibitors: cyclin dependent kinases inhibitors; PDT: photodynamic therapy; PTT: photothermal therapy; ACT: adoptive cell transfer therapy; NO: nitric oxide; non-apoptotic RCD: non-apoptotic regulated cell death; SDT: sonodynamic therapy; TTFields: tumor treating fields
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