The current status of immunotherapy in the treatment of primary advanced and recurrent endometrial cancer
Purpose of review
Despite the recent upward trends in incidence and mortality of endometrial cancer, there are still limited FDA-approved therapies for patients with primary advanced and recurrent endometrial cancer. This disparity presents the opportunity for further investigation of targeted therapies in this patient population.
Recent findings
One such area of adjuvant therapy is immunotherapy, which has shown improved progression-free survival in patients with several solid tumors, including endometrial, leading to the FDA approval of two immune checkpoint inhibitors. Additionally, with further study of precision medicine, the current adjuvant treatment paradigms that exist based on histopathologic subtype alone may be shifting towards a new genomic-based approach.
Summary
This article is a snapshot of the origins of immunotherapy use in this patient population as well as a guide to its future use. The author's hope with this article is to describe the patient population as well as the history of the integration of immunotherapy use into the adjuvant treatment of endometrial cancer leading up to FDA approval of Pembrolizumab and Dostarlimab. This article also consolidates the current literature as well as ongoing clinical trials that will hopefully lead to FDA approval of more immunotherapeutic agents in the near future.