TURKISH JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY 2020 , Vol 35 , Num 4
The Role of Pathology in Predicting Immunotherapy Response in Urogenital Tumors
Yasemin ÖZLÜK1
1Department of Pathology, İstanbul University, Faculty of Medicine, İstanbul-Turkey DOI : 10.5505/tjo.2020.2328 Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) are recently introduced in the management of various cancers. There are three main immunotargets as follows: Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA4), programmed death 1 (PD-1) and programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1). These three targets are under investigation for therapeutic, predictive and prognostic purposes in genitourinary cancers. There is a need for predictive biomarkers of immunotherapy to optimize treatment, to limit side-effects and to reduce the costs of therapy. This review focuses on the role of pathologic applications in the selection of patients with genitourinary cancer who are potentially responsive to immunotherapy. PD-L1 expression by immunohistochemistry, tumor mutation burden and microsatellite instability status are mainly discussed. Keywords : Cancer; genitourinary; immunotherapy; PD-L1; pathology