Abstract

Immunotherapy is revolutionizing oncology, with a simple guiding principle: the host immune system has the potential to eradicate cancer, treatment consisting in optimizing immune actors’ functions. Although significant results were demonstrated in patients with melanoma or lung cancer, objective response rate (ORR) is only 20% in digestive oncology. However, we can improve this situation by a better knowledge of anti-tumor immunity. For example, ORR is multiplied by two to three in case of PD-L1 (programmed death-ligand 1) overexpression or microsatellite instability (MSI). In a near future, we will certainly be able to take into account other biomarkers for building composite scores for assigning to each patient with digestive cancer an ‘immune identity card’ able to strongly predict immunotherapy efficacy.

Keywords: Immunotherapy; Predictive factors; Immune checkpoint inhibitors; Microsatellite instability; Neoantigens