Autoimmune Cardiotoxicity of Cancer Immunotherapy

Feixiong Cheng1, Joseph Loscalzo2

  • 1Center for Complex Networks Research, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA; Center for Cancer Systems Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA.

Trends in Immunology
|December 7, 2016
PubMed

Contemporary immunotherapies (e.g., immune checkpoint inhibitors), which enhance the immune response to cancer cells, improve clinical outcomes in several malignancies. A recent study reported the cases of two patients with metastatic melanoma who developed fatal myocarditis during ipilimumab and nivolumab combination immunotherapy; these examples highlight the risk of unbridled activation of the immune system.

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