Role of immunotherapy in ovarian cancer: a narrative review

Background and Objective: Ovarian cancer (OC) is a deadly gynaecological cancer with limited successful treatment options; approximately 70–80% of patients relapse, even those who initially respond well to treatment. It has been recently suggested that relapse occurs due to dormancy, an inactive cellular state which can evade traditional therapeutics targeting highly proliferating cells through different mechanisms. One is immune evasion, which conceals tumour cells from the body’s natural defence system. The cells can modulate their immunogenicity and that of the host to overcome the opposing tumour-immune system operation. Therefore, developing immunotherapies, which function to arm the host immune system against the tumour, is vital to patient survival. Considering the successes of immunotherapies in other cancers, this review will outline various tumour immune evasion strategies within its complex microenvironment and examine current significant developments in immunotherapies to inflame the ovarian tumour and overcome the resistance such that no cell is left behind.