Tumor infiltrating lymphocyte therapy for ovarian cancer and renal cell carcinoma

Abstract

Personalized cancer immunotherapy based on infusion of T cells holds the promise to specifically target a patient’s individual tumor. Accumulating evidence indicates that the T cells mediating these tumor regressions after cancer immunotherapies may primarily target patient-specific mutations expressed by the patients’ tumors and that the presence of these “neo-antigen” specific Tcells may be related to a high number of mutations in the tumor. In melanoma, treatment with autologous tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) can mediate durable complete responses. Previous trials investigating TIL therapy in solid tumors other than melanoma have shown limited success, however none of these early trials used current preparative chemotherapy regimens, and the methods for in vitro lymphocyte expansion have changed considerably. New advances and understandings in T cell based immunotherapies have stimulated the interest in developing this approach for other indications. Here, we summarize the early clinical data in the field of adoptive cell transfer therapy (ACT) using tumorinfiltrating lymphocytes for patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and ovarian cancer (OC). In addition we describe the major advances in the characterization and application of TIL therapy for patients with RCC and OC.