Biomarkers for immune-related toxicities of checkpoint inhibitors: current progress and the road ahead

ABSTRACTIntroduction: Immune checkpoint pathways are key immune regulatory pathways that play a physiologic role in maintaining immune-homeostasis and are often co-opted by cancer cells to evade the host immune system. Recent developments in cancer immunotherapy, mainly drugs blocking the immune checkpoint pathways, have revolutionized the treatment paradigm for many solid tumors. A wide spectrum of immune-related adverse events (irAEs) have been described with the use of these agents which necessitate treatment with immunosuppression, lead to disruption of therapy and can on occasion be life-threatening. There are currently no clinically validated biomarkers to predict the risk of irAEs.Areas covered: In this review, the authors describe the current progress in identifying biomarkers for irAEs and potential future directions. Literature search was conducted using PubMed-MEDLINE, Embase and Scopus. In addition, abstracts from major conference proceedings were reviewed for relevant content.Expert commentar...