Abstract:Liver cancer is one of the malignant tumors with high incidence and extremely poor prognosis in China. Current treatments such as surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy have been proved to be limited effects. It is very necessary to develop new therapeutic methods. Immunotherapy is one of the potentially effective treatments. Programmed cell death receptor-1 (PD-1) is an important immune checkpoint, which is mainly expressed on activated T lymphocytes, B lymphocytes and NK cells, and has an immunosuppressive effect. Multiple tumors highly express programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), and PD-L1 binds to PD-1 on the surface of T cells and other cells, exerting negative immune regulation, leading to inactivation of T lymphocytes and thus tumor immune escape. A couple of studies have found that blockage of PD-1 can rebuild the immune surveillance function of T lymphocytes and prolong the overall survival of patients with liver cancer and other tumors. In this article, we have reviewed the advances of PD-1 targeted therapy for liver cancer. The key issue that needs to be solved is how to maximize the response rate of antibodies against immune checkpoints and meanwhile reduce the incidence of immune-related adverse events through combination therapy and other methods.
