A New Approach to Cancer Immunotherapy

Lingbing Zhang

Despite great progress has been made in cancer care, late-stage cancer still represents a great challenge to modern medicine. Part of the challenge may be because more than80% of late-stage cancer patients develop cancer cachexia. Cancer cachexia significantly reduces patient’s response and tolerance to cancer treatment. More importantly, the syndrome dramatically reduces patient’s quality of life thus brings enormous suffering both to patients and their families. Due to the lack of treatment, the syndrome directly kills 30% of cancer patients. Despite great efforts have been made to develop treatments for cancer cachexia, all previous drug projects for cancer cachexia have failed in clinical trials. We have conducted a series of elaborate studies to explore how the tumor affects the host and inflicts cancer cachexia. Findings from our studies reveal a new cause of cancer cachexia—tumor-induced immune disorder. This new mechanism is shockingly consistent with and supported by strong clinical evidence. Our approach to the development of therapeutics for cancer cachexia is focused on modulating the immune disorder, and thus pioneering a new direction to develop cancer immunotherapy. In this event, we will discuss this new approach to cancer immunotherapy, through which we aim to develop breakthrough therapies of late-stage cancer patients with cachexia.