Insight on the Clinical Trials of Immunotherapy for the Treatment of Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is predominant in the global cancer scenario with lung cancer fatalities greater than 15%. Causes of lung cancer are smoking, environmental pollution and familial genetics. Lung tumours may be understood under two categories: non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC). The approved treatment strategies are chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Chemotherapy encompasses non-specific chemotherapeutics, targeted therapy. Immuno-therapeutics are usually prescribed along with the conventional chemotherapy-approved drugs. Immunotherapy has the potential to lead to sustained remission in responsive lung cancer patients irrespective of the type of cancer driver mutations. The primary objective of immunotherapy is to incite adaptive T-cell immunity leading to destruction of tumour cells. There are several strategies employed to achieve this goal, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, immunostimulatory molecules, cellular immunotherapy, engineering of immune cells and tumour-associated antigen vaccines. This chapter explores these strategies with respect to their clinical success and interrogation.