Management of immune-related adverse events resulting from immune checkpoint blockade

Introduction: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) are now a standard of care in the treatment of many cancers leading to durable responses in patients with metastatic disease. These agents are generally well tolerated but may lead to the occurrence of immune-related adverse events (irAEs). As any organ may be affected, clinicians should be aware of the broad range of clinical manifestations and symptoms and keep in mind that toxicities may occur late, at any point along a patient’s treatment course. Although the most common irAEs are rarely severe, some of them may be associated with great morbidity and even become life-threatening. The rate of occurrence, type and severity of irAEs may vary with the type of ICI; thus, grade 3 and 4 irAEs are reported in more than 55% of patients treated with the combination of ipilimumab 3 mg/kg and nivolumab 1 mg/kg.

Area covered: This review presents the management of irAEs resulting from checkpoint blockade, with a focus on rare irAEs.

Expert commentary: With the development of immuno-oncology and the expanding role of ICI, physicians have learnt to diagnose and treat most of the irAEs that can occur. This review provides an overview of current guidelines, previously published studies and our multidisciplinary team based practices.     

Hypofractionated radiation therapy for invasive breast cancer: From moderate to extreme protocols

Adjuvant irradiation is the standard treatment after breast conservative surgery. Normofractionated regimen with an overall treatment time of 5 to 6 weeks is often considered as a limiting factor for irradiation compliance. In order to answer this issue, moderate and more recently extreme hypofractionated protocols appeared. We report here oncological outcomes and toxicity of hypofractionated breast irradiation. After defining the frame of moderate and extreme hypofractionated breast irradiations based on overall treatment time, patient selection criteria were listed. According to their levels of proof, the results of moderate and extreme hypofractionated breast irradiation were analysed. Overall treatment time for moderate hypofractionated breast irradiation ranged from 3 to 4 weeks, while for extreme hypofractionated breast irradiation, it was less than 1 week. For moderate hypofractionated breast irradiation, whole breast irradiation was currently performed with or without lymph node irradiation. Moderate hypofractionated breast irradiation has proven to be as safe and as efficient as normofractionated breast irradiation with level IA evidence. For extreme hypofractionated breast irradiation, phase III randomized trials confirmed that accelerated partial breast irradiation was non-inferior in terms of local control compared to normofractionated whole breast irradiation (with external beam radiation therapy and multicatheter brachytherapy), with similar acute and late toxicity. While the use of intraoperative breast irradiation remains under debate, new very accelerated partial breast irradiation (overall treatment time not exceeding 2 days) protocols emerged with encouraging results. Accelerated partial breast irradiation is warranted for extreme hypofractionated breast irradiation and is indicated for low-risk breast cancers. Moderate and extreme hypofractionated breast irradiation regimens are validated and can be routinely proposed according to patient selection criteria.     

Recent advances with cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors: therapeutic agents for breast cancer and their role in immuno-oncology

Introduction: Collaborative interactions between several diverse biological processes govern the onset and progression of breast cancer. These processes include alterations in cellular metabolism, anti-tumor immune responses, DNA damage repair, proliferation, anti-apoptotic signals, autophagy, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, components of the non-coding genome or onco-mIRs, cancer stem cells and cellular invasiveness. The last two decades have revealed that each of these processes are also directly regulated by a component of the cell cycle apparatus, cyclin D1.

Area covered: The current review is provided to update recent developments in the clinical application of cyclin/CDK inhibitors to breast cancer with a focus on the anti-tumor immune response.

Expert opinion: The cyclin D1 gene encodes the regulatory subunit of a proline-directed serine-threonine kinase that phosphorylates several substrates. CDKs possess phosphorylation site selectivity, with the phosphate-acceptor residue preceding a proline. Several important proteins are substrates including all three retinoblastoma proteins, NRF1, GCN5, and FOXM1. Over 280 cyclin D3/CDK6 substrates have b\een identified. Given the diversity of substrates for cyclin/CDKs, and the altered thresholds for substrate phosphorylation that occurs during the cell cycle, it is exciting that small molecular inhibitors targeting cyclin D/CDK activity have encouraging results in specific tumors.