Today, immunotherapy is maintaining its momentum in clinical development programs, with explorations under way in many tumor types, including breast and lung cancers previously considered poor candidates for such modalities.

More than a dozen active immunotherapies are in late-stage development (Table 1 Below). And, an early-phase study into an immunotherapy agent targeting the programmed death-1 (PD-1) pathway in three different tumor types emerged as one of the most noteworthy abstracts at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in June.¹

At the same time, significant challenges remain in translating research discoveries into clinical use and in the marketplace, where immunotherapy has sometimes struggled to establish solid financial footing.

OncologyLive interviewed several experts on the front lines of the immunotherapy field. Here are their thoughts:

Mary L. Disis, MD, is a chief co-investigator of the Cancer Immunotherapy Trials Network (CITN), which links researchers at 27 institutions with the intention of creating a pipeline of agents that can move into advanced trials. The National Cancer Institute launched the network in April 2011, designating the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center as its headquarters.

Disis said the rationale for establishing the CITN was “the explosion of new agents that are being developed for the immune system,” particularly after the FDA approved sipuleucel-T (Provenge) for the treatment of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer in April 2010 and ipilimumab (Yervoy) for unresectable and metastatic melanoma in March 2011.

“Seeing the approval of immune therapy treatments really working in patients with very advanced-stage disease, where you would expect the immune system wouldn’t be so effective, has spurred a desire to rapidly test and bring forward novel reagents across different tumors, not just melanoma or prostate cancer, that will really make a difference in the lives of patients with both advanced-stage disease and earlier-stage disease,” said Disis.

The CITN members plan to work as a unit to design trials and investigate biomarkers.

In her own work, Disis has been investigating potential immunotherapies in breast cancer for 20 years. In the past, breast tumors typically were not considered immunogenic, but research advances indicate the opposite. She believes that the immune system can be stimulated not only to treat breast cancer but also to prevent relapse.