Nature Magazine - November 27, 2014

147 Pages | True PDF | English | 14 MB 


This issue of Nature features five papers reflecting the current intense interest in the targeting of immune checkpoints as cancer therapy, and detailed work on identifying patients likely to respond this therapeutic strategy. Specifically, blockade of the transmembrane protein PD-L1 or its cell-surface receptor PD-1, upregulated in many different cancers, has shown promise in preclinical experiments and now in clinical trials. Powles et al. report on a clinical phase 1 study in metastatic urothelial bladder cancer treated with the anti-PD-L1 antibody MPDL3280A (page 558), and Tumeh et al. (page 568) and Herbst et al. (page 563) examine how PD-L1/PD-1 blockade enhances therapeutic responses in metastatic melanoma and lung cancer, respectively. Yadav et al. (page 572) and Gubin et al. (page 577) demonstrate the role of mutant tumour antigens in forming ligands for T-cell responses activated by PD-L1/PD-1 inhibition