Tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy for lung cancer and its future paradigms

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death, with an estimated 1.8 million deaths contributing to this cancer in 2020. Despite advances in treatment options and various approaches being attempted, the survival rate remains low.

Areas covered

In this review, we aim to provide an overview of the efficacy of tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy for lung cancer based on existing clinical trials. We also discuss the current challenges and future landscape of this treatment modality.

Expert opinion

Lung cancer can be a suitable candidate for TIL therapy due to its high mutational burden. Specifically, it has shown promising results for non-small cell lung cancer resistant to immune checkpoint inhibitors. Still, there are many restrictions associated with the ex vivo expansion and delivery of TILs, limiting their availability. For this reason, applying TIL for the treatment of lung cancer has not been extensively investigated yet and only a few clinical trials have shown favorable results of TIL therapy in patients with lung cancer. Thus, facilitating this costly, labor-intensive and time-consuming process is of utmost importance to increase the number of performed studies and to detect eligible patients who could benefit most from this treatment modality.

KEYWORDS:

• Adoptive cell therapy
• adoptive cell transfer
• lung cancer
• NSCLC
• personalized medicine
• tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte
• TIL

Article highlights

• Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide.

• Tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy is an adoptive cell therapy technique, that is being studied for various types of cancer, especially melanoma.

• The immunogenic tumor microenvironment of lung cancer makes it a possible candidate for immunotherapy treatments such as TIL therapy.

• Currently available results are undecisive on the efficacy and safety of TIL therapy for lung cancer and several clinical trials are in the process of further evaluating this method.

• TIL therapy could be enhanced using modifications such as gene editing or incorporating TWS119, although further studies are needed to establish their effectiveness.

This box summarizes key points contained in the article.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.