Recent progress in therapeutic antibodies for cancer immunotherapy

Therapeutic antibodies have advanced the clinical management of multiple diseases including cancer. Cancer immunotherapy has been a focal point of recent clinical research with the success of checkpoint inhibitor antibodies, particularly those that target the PD-L1/PD-1 pathway. These antibodies that target specific steps of the cancer-immunity cycle show improved anti-tumor response, progression-free survival and overall survival versus standard therapy across multiple tumor types. Despite these advancements, not all patients experience durable response from checkpoint inhibition treatment. Ongoing research is focused on identifying various biomarkers of cancer-immune biology and elucidating specific immune escape mechanisms. Additionally, current clinical development efforts have focused on checkpoint inhibitors in combination with other agents as well as developing new antibody technologies targeting different targets simultaneously.