The future of immunotherapy in oncology is vast

“Immunotherapy is highly promising, but its development wasn’t easy—immunity is incredibly complex. The first breakthroughs came with drugs that regulate the immune response, specifically immune checkpoint inhibitors. The immune system is finely tuned to attack tumor cells while sparing healthy ones. When a tumor progresses, it’s because it has evaded this immune control.”

“With immunotherapy, we enhance the patient’s immune system to reject and destroy cancer cells. The introduction of these initial immunotherapeutic drugs has led to remarkable progress for certain tumor types. For example, in advanced melanomas with widespread metastases—including to the brain—immunotherapy has achieved long-term survival rates exceeding 60 percent. Before its arrival, it was rare for these patients to survive beyond a year.”

“However, the effectiveness of current immunotherapy varies widely depending on the tumor type. It works exceptionally well for cancers like melanoma or tumors with ‘microsatellite instability’ (a molecular trait found in a small percentage of tumors across various sites). In other cancers—such as lung, esophagogastric, head and neck, urological, or some breast cancers—immunotherapy has brought progress, but the gains are more modest or limited to specific patient subgroups. Meanwhile, cancers like prostate, pancreatic, or colorectal cancer without microsatellite instability remain largely unresponsive to today’s immunotherapy.”

“The good news is that the potential of antitumor immunotherapy is enormous, and current treatments tap into only a fraction of it. There’s still much room for advancement. Right now, over 1,000 clinical trials worldwide are exploring new, more effective immunotherapy approaches that could target a broader range of tumors.”

Source: Statements by Dr. Fernando Rivera to the Cantabria College of Physicians

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