Immunotherapy: From Discovery to Bedside

Immunotherapy has the promise of effectively treating cancer with more discrimination and less side effects compared to conventional cancer treatments. To date, immunotherapy has not been able to cure most cancers and challenges with this class raise many more questions about the interplay among the immune system, tumor cells, and their surrounding microenvironment. Improving our understanding of these relationships has yielded innumerable targets for new treatments in the immune-oncology space. Herein we review the broad categories of immunotherapy, as well as discuss the pathway(s) for bringing promising treatments to the clinic. Challenges posed by immune-oncology therapies have led to shifts in approaches to clinical trials and we will discuss these as well.