Role of Immune Therapies for Myeloma

Immune therapy has emerged as a promising area of cancer therapeutics based on its potential for tumor selectivity and targeting of chemotherapy-resistant clones. Allogeneic transplantation produces durable remissions in a subset of patients, albeit at the cost of graft- versus-host disease. Recent years have witnessed efforts to induce more selective immune responses via dendritic cell vaccines, autologous and engineered T-cell therapy, and immune checkpoint blockade. Optimizing these immunotherapeutic approaches, understanding how to best use them in combination, and determining how to integrate them with standard anti-myeloma therapy could provide the potential to alter the natural history of this disease.