Cancer Immunotherapy: Harnessing the Immune System for Cancer Treatments

In the last decade, harnessing the immune system with immune checkpoint blockades has achieved remarkable results in solid tumors of different histotypes, enabling durable responses and long-term survival. Despite these unprecedented results, primary or acquired resistance can limit its efficacy; therefore a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanism of resistance is crucial for the identification of novel therapeutic strategies in several clinical settings (e.g. adjuvant, neo-adjuvant setting, rare tumors, etc.). In this exciting scenario, to untangle the threads of immunotherapy, research needs to answer some key questions, ranging from the mechanistic exploration causing lack of response, to the identification of biomarkers, but also the development of novel immunotherapeutic modalities and their clinical applications.