Immuno-oncology in cervical cancer

Abstract

Cervical cancer (CC) remains a challenging disease despite the approved preventive vaccines against HPV, which is the cause of this type of tumor. Immune-mediated treatments, or immuno-oncology, currently represent 6% of cancer therapies, and in the next 10 years, this percentage is expected to increase up to 70%. There are ongoing efforts to develop specific immunotherapies, such as immunomodulatory drugs and antibodies, to treat CC in combination with standard-of-care regimens. However, currently, there are no clinically available active antigen-specific immunotherapies that effectively treat CC, despite multiple studies in animal models that have mainly focused on the viral early proteins (E2, E5, E6, and E7). There are data from clinical trials using DNA, proteins, and peptide vaccines targeting these viral early proteins as treatments for CC, but there has been limited clinical success. It is clear that the adaptive immune system plays an important role in CC; multiple studies have shown that immune infiltration is related to prognosis. Non-viral targets are also potential candidates for targeting by next-generation immunotherapies for CC and vaccines to prevent relapse.