Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics of Immunotherapy

Over the last decade, there have been exciting advances in the development of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), adoptive cellular therapies, vaccines, and viruses in eliciting immune responses against tumor cells with promising results in patients. This chapter highlights some of the immunotherapies that are in late-stage development or have received regulatory approval and summarizes their mechanisms of action, pharmacokinetics (PK), and pharmacodynamics (PD). This chapter summarizes the PK and PD of single-agent immunotherapies from publicly available sources through 2016. Advances in the field of immunotherapy have revolutionized oncology practice. The field is rapidly changing, and at any given time, there are hundreds of ongoing clinical trials with immunotherapies as single agents or in various combinations with another immunotherapy, targeted therapy, radiation therapy, or chemotherapy. Available data from new studies may provide additional insight for clinical PK and PD for immunotherapies in new patient populations.