Clinical Trials of Ovarian Cancer Immunotherapy and Future Directions

Ovarian cancer (OC) is an immunogenic tumor and among the first where measures of anti-tumor immunity correlated with improved survival. Thus, immunotherapy could be a viable OC treatment modality. Nonetheless, clinical OC immunotherapy trials have demonstrated only modest successes at best, and there is currently no Food and Drug Administration (FDA)approved OC immune therapy despite recent successes in other carcinomas and lymphomas and FDA-approved immunotherapy agents for them. New data suggest specific impediments to effective de novo and treatment-induced anti-OC immunity and support the concept that effective, tolerable OC immunotherapy could be developed based on these newer insights. This chapter reviews the history of OC immunotherapy, highlights important discoveries in OC-related immune dysfunction, covers promising recent developments, highlights newer and ongoing clinical trials, and speculates on future directions that could lead to improved OC immunotherapy approaches.