In this episode of the IJGC podcast, Editor-in-Chief Dr. Pedro Ramirez is joined by Dr. Dmitriy Zamarin to discuss immune checkpoint inhibitors in ovarian cancer. Dr. Zamarin is a medical oncologist and a translational research director in gynecologic medical oncology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His research focuses on development of novel immune therapeutics in gynecologic malignancies and on the mechanisms of immune response to immunotherapy.



Highlights:

-Immune checkpoint blockade benefits a subset of patients with ovarian cancer, but predictors of such benefit remain unknown.

-Patients with ovarian clear cell carcinoma appear to be more likely to derive benefit from immunotherapy, particularly from combined immune checkpoint blockade; however, these patients still constitute only a minority of those with ovarian clear cell carcinoma.

-Larger prospective trials of immune checkpoint blockade, including combined immune checkpoint blockade in ovarian clear cell carcinoma, are needed to validate these early observations.

-Biomarkers of response to immunotherapy like PD-L1 expression and tumor mutation burden are of limited value in ovarian cancer, and other molecular and microenvironment biomarkers are needed.