Non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, a disease with the oldest immunotherapeutic standard of care, has seen recent improvements in treatment via the application of checkpoint blocking antibodies. Unfortunately, response rates to programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) blocking antibodies remain low despite stratification by biomarkers. Sharing common biology with T cells but lacking true antigen-specificity and responding earlier to tumorigenic threats, natural killer (NK) cells present an ideal target for combination immunotherapies. NK-targeted immunotherapies under clinical investigation, including anti-NKG2A antibodies, interleukin agonists, and engineered viral vectors, hold promise in altering the immunotherapeutic landscape in bladder cancer and will be the focus of this review.
Trends in cancer. 2022 May 14 [Epub ahead of print]
Daniel Ranti, Christine Bieber, Yuan-Shuo Wang, John P Sfakianos, Amir Horowitz
Department of Oncological Sciences, Precision Immunology Institute, Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA; Department of Urology, Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA., Department of Urology, Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA., Department of Oncological Sciences, Precision Immunology Institute, Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA. Electronic address: .