Traditionally, anti-cancer treatments mainly focus on chemotherapies,
radiation therapy and surgery. However, these treatments are limited in terms of their
specificity for targeting only cancer cells. DNA damaging chemotherapy is one of the
most common treatment modalities of cancer. Current progress of targeted therapy that
relies on DNA damage response (DDR) in cancer offers a vast therapeutic window by
specifically targeting DDR functions in patient specific tumours. Recent developments
in immunotherapy – therapy that boosts the body’s immune system to fight against
cancer cells, have shown promising results. Currently, different approaches of
immunotherapies such as cytokine, antibody, oncolytic virus, adoptive cell transfer
therapies or cancer vaccination have made significant progress in treating different
cancer types. This paper seeks to provide an overview of the recent developments of
drugs targeting DDR and various immunotherapeutic approaches, with specific focus
on the anti-CD19 CAR-T cell therapy. Finally, the paper will give a perspective on
future directions of DDR therapy, CAR-T cell therapy as well as the combination of
different cancer therapies for effective cancer treatment regime.
Over the past few years, the decipher of different DNA damage response mechanisms
enables the development of novel inhibitors for cancer treatment. Furthermore, recent
advances in genomic editing technologies and scientific discoveries reveal important
roles of the immune system in the context of cancer development. This also prompts
the plethora of drug developments that have vast potential in the treatment of different
types of cancer diseases. This paper will give an overview of recent drug developments
in chemotherapeutic agents targeting DNA damage response as well as recent
immunotherapies that have been successful in the treatment of human cancers. The
contents discussed in the paper are summarized in (Fig. 1).
Keywords: Adoptive Cell Transfer Therapies, Antibody Therapy, Anti-CD19
CAR-T Cell Therapy, Combinational Approaches, Cytokine Therapy, DNA
Damage Response, DNA Damage Response Inhibitors, Immunotherapy,
Oncolytic Virus Approach.
