Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Surgery, radiation and chemotherapy still carry much of the treatment burden, yet a large proportion of patients progress despite them. Immunotherapy takes a different route, recruiting the patient’s own immune system to recognise and destroy cancer cells.

The difficulty is that tumours are built to avoid exactly that. Cancer cells trigger a range of immunosuppressive mechanisms that drive T-cell dysfunction, allowing the tumour to establish and spread. Blocking those mechanisms has proved to be one of the most productive ideas in modern oncology: checkpoint inhibitors such as anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4 antibodies have delivered striking efficacy across multiple tumour types, and opened the door to a wide pipeline of immune-stimulating agents, each with a distinct mechanism of action.

In this session, Dr. Anwar Murtaza walks through where immuno-oncology stands today and where it is heading. The talk covers checkpoint blockade as monotherapy and in combination, and moves on to the newer wave of approaches including T-cell engagers and CAR-T, along with combination strategies pairing immunotherapy with cancer vaccines and with radiotherapy.