3.1　Target Immune Cells

Over the last 20 years, major improvements have been made in the design and production of mAbs and they are now used as passive immunotherapy strategies as part of the standard treatment of many cancers, targeting surface antigens expressed by tumor cells (e.g., HER2, EGFR).mAbs could be used to generate active antitumor immunity in patients with cancer, by targeting costimulatory or inhibitory molecules expressed at the surface of immune cells.Such immunomodulatory mAbs may be either agonistic, targeting co-stimulatory molecules, or antagonistic, “blocking” inhibitory molecules.The aim of these approaches is to augment endogenous anti-tumor immune responses, either by providing direct immune stimulation or by releasing regulatory mechanisms.They have resulted in a paradigm shift in cancer therapy, where instead of using drugs to target the tumor cells, molecules are designed to target the immune system in order to break the tumor tolerance, and stimulate the anti-tumor immune response.The promising results obtained with such immunomodulatory mAbs in early phase clinical trials open many perspectives for synergistic combinatorial strategies [21].(https://www.daowen.com)