Research status of PD-1 and PD-L1
Announcement of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine by Professor Thomas Perlmann, Secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, on 1 October 2018. It was awarded jointly to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo “for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.” This news is really exciting, not only because immunotherapy is now a hot topic at home and abroad, but also because its emergence has pushed the anti-cancer history to a new milestone. There is no doubt that the clinical use of “inhibitory immune checkpoints” for cancer treatment is the most important advance over the past 10 years. Blocking antibodies against the co-suppressor immune receptor PD-1 (or its ligand PD-L1) and CTLA-4 (cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated protein 4) as a single drug has shown to be powerful in many cancers, including melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, and non-small cell lung cancer, some of the patients even treated. In the latest issue of Science Immunology, the new combination of immunotherapy has been strongly listed on the front page with “Combination cancer immunotherapy targeting PD-1 and GITR can rescue CD8 T cell dysfunction and maintain memory phenotype”.
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