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REVIEW article

Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1490590
This article is part of the Research Topic Biomarkers of Immunotoxicity from Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors View all 12 articles

Advances in Biomarkers for Immunotherapy in Small cell lung cancer

Provisionally accepted
Hui Li Hui Li Peiyan Zhao Peiyan Zhao Lin Tian Lin Tian Yuanhua Lu Yuanhua Lu Xinyue Wang Xinyue Wang Wenjun Shao Wenjun Shao *Ying Cheng Ying Cheng *
  • Jilin Cancer Hospital, Changchun, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a refractory cancer with rapid growth and high aggressiveness. Extensive-stage SCLC (ES-SCLC) is initially sensitive to chemotherapy, however drug resistance and recurrence occur rapidly, resulting in a poor survival outcome due to lack of subsequently effecient therapy. The emergence of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) generated a new landscape of SCLC treatment and significantly prolonged the survival of patients. However, the unselected immunotherapy restrains both beneficiary population and responsive period in SCLC compared to the other tumors. The complex tumor origin, high heterogeneity and immunosuppressive microenvironment may disturb the value of conventional biomarkers in SCLC including programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) and tumor mutation burden (TMB). Transcriptional regulator-based subtypes of SCLC are current research hotspot, revealing Y (I) subtype can benefit from ICIs. Additionally, molecules related to immune microenvironment, immunogenicity, epigenetics, and SCLC itself also indicated the therapeutic benefits of ICIs, becoming potential predictive biomarkers. In this review, we discussed the advances of biomarkers for prediction and prognosis of immunotherapy, promising directions in the future, and provide reference and options for precision immunotherapy and survival improvement in SCLC patients.

    Keywords: Small Cell Lung Cancer, Immunotherapy, biomarker, Research advances, predictive, prognosis

    Received: 03 Sep 2024; Accepted: 18 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Li, Zhao, Tian, Lu, Wang, Shao and Cheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Wenjun Shao, Jilin Cancer Hospital, Changchun, China
    Ying Cheng, Jilin Cancer Hospital, Changchun, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.