Granulocyte Apheresis: Can It Be Associated with Anti PD-1 Therapy for Melanoma?

Abstract

In the field of advanced melanoma, there is an urgent need to investigate novel approaches targeting specific components of the cancer–immunity cycle beyond immune checkpoint inhibitors. The authors reviewed the basic understanding of the role of neutrophils in cancer biology, and the latest clinical evidence supporting the correlation between cancer-associated neutrophils and the prognosis and response to the immunotherapy of advanced melanoma. Finally, they propose that granulocyte and monocyte apheresis, an emerging non-pharmacological treatment in current dermatology, could become an investigative treatment targeting melanoma-associated neutrophils which could be potentially used in combination with the usual immune checkpoint inhibitors.

Immune-Mediated Skin Diseases: Future Therapeutic Perspectives

“…Neutrophils are emerging players in cancer biology and have been demonstrated to negatively affect prognosis and therapeutic response in melanoma. A review by our group summarized current knowledge in this filed and proposed future investigations of granulocyte and monocyte apheresis, a non-pharmacologic neutrophil-depleting technique, which could prove safe and effective in combination with checkpoint blockade, especially in those patients with advanced neoplasms that do not respond to cancer immunotherapy alone [8].…”