Immunotherapy for Resected Pulmonary Metastases

Micrometastatic disease following pulmonary metastasectomy is an ideal setting to test adjuvant immunotherapy, as the efficacy of immunotherapy in experimental models is greatest with the smallest tumor burdens. Although there is not a standard-of-care adjuvant immunotherapy for resected pulmonary metastases, there have been several studies using cytokines and other immunostimulatory molecules in conjunction with metastasectomies in patients with melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, sarcoma, and colorectal cancer, which have provided preliminary data that such adjuvant therapy is feasible and safe and may be useful in the future, following more rigorous testing, as routine therapy to prevent recurrences.