Future perspectives in melanoma research : Meeting report from the "Melanoma Bridge". Napoli, December 1st-4th 2015

• Published in: Journal of translational medicine 2016-11, Vol.14 (1), p.313, Article 313
• Main Authors: Ascierto, Paolo A, Agarwala, Sanjiv, Botti, Gerardo, Cesano, Alessandra, Ciliberto, Gennaro, Davies, Michael A, Demaria, Sandra, Dummer, Reinhard, Eggermont, Alexander M, Ferrone, Soldano, Fu, Yang Xin, Gajewski, Thomas F, Garbe, Claus, Huber, Veronica, Khleif, Samir, Krauthammer, Michael, Lo, Roger S, Masucci, Giuseppe, Palmieri, Giuseppe, Postow, Michael, Puzanov, Igor, Silk, Ann, Spranger, Stefani, Stroncek, David F, Tarhini, Ahmad, Taube, Janis M, Testori, Alessandro, Wang, Ena, Wargo, Jennifer A, Yee, Cassian, Zarour, Hassane, Zitvogel, Laurence, Fox, Bernard A, Mozzillo, Nicola, Marincola, Francesco M, Thurin, Magdalena
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Biomarkers, Tumor - metabolism; Biomedical Research; Clinical Trials as Topic; Combined Modality Therapy; Humans; Immunotherapy; Italy; Medicin och hälsovetenskap; Meeting Report; Melanoma - genetics; Melanoma - immunology; Melanoma - pathology; Melanoma - therapy; Tumor Microenvironment
• ISSN: 1479-5876; 1479-5876
• DOI: 10.1186/s12967-016-1070-y

The sixth "Melanoma Bridge Meeting" took place in Naples, Italy, December 1st-4th, 2015. The four sessions at this meeting were focused on: (1) molecular and immune advances; (2) combination therapies; (3) news in immunotherapy; and 4) tumor microenvironment and biomarkers. Recent advances in tumor biology and immunology has led to the development of new targeted and immunotherapeutic agents that prolong progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) of cancer patients. Immunotherapies in particular have emerged as highly successful approaches to treat patients with cancer including melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), renal cell carcinoma (RCC), bladder cancer, and Hodgkin's disease. Specifically, many clinical successes have been using checkpoint receptor blockade, including T cell inhibitory receptors such as cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) and the programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) and its ligand PD-L1. Despite demonstrated successes, responses to immunotherapy interventions occur only in a minority of patients. Attempts are being made to improve responses to immunotherapy by developing biomarkers. Optimizing biomarkers for immunotherapy could help properly select patients for treatment and help to monitor response, progression and resistance that are critical challenges for the immuno-oncology (IO) field. Importantly, biomarkers could help to design rational combination therapies. In addition, biomarkers may help to define mechanism of action of different agents, dose selection and to sequence drug combinations. However, biomarkers and assays development to guide cancer immunotherapy is highly challenging for several reasons: (i) multiplicity of immunotherapy agents with different mechanisms of action including immunotherapies that target activating and inhibitory T cell receptors (e.g., CTLA-4, PD-1, etc.); adoptive T cell therapies that include tissue infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), and T cell receptor (TCR) modified T cells; (ii) tumor heterogeneity including changes in antigenic profiles over time and location in individual patient; and (iii) a variety of immune-suppressive mechanisms in the tumor microenvironment (TME) including T regulatory cells (Treg), myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSC) and immunosuppressive cytokines. In addition, complex interaction of tumor-immune system further increases the level of difficulties in the process of biomarkers development and their