[New frontiers in the fight against cancer]

After many years of research, recent advances shed a new light on the role of the immune system in cancer. New therapeutic antibodies, such as anti-PD-1/L1, that block the interactions of inhibitory receptors (immune checkpoint inhibitors, ICI) with their ligands, have revolutionized the management of cancer patients. Nevertheless, they only affect a small part of the patient population. The main current challenge for immuno-oncology is to overcome these resistances by targeting new control points and new immune cells, combining these new immunotherapies with one another and with other standard treatments. Monalizumab is a novel antibody that simultaneously stimulates the anti-tumor action of NK and T cells by blocking one of their inhibitory receptors: NKG2A. NKG2A is present on the surface of both cell types and its ligand, HLA-E, and is very frequently overexpressed by human tumors, opening a wide therapeutic window to monalizumab.