New therapeutic approaches in recurrent cervical cancer

Background Approved therapeutic options for patients with resistant, recurrent, or metastatic cervical cancer are limited. Objectives Therapeutic agents, for which published results of phase I and II trials are available, will be presented in this review. Materials and methods A selective literature searched was performed in the PubMed. Clinical trials were identified in the database of . Results Inhibitors against programmed death protein 1/programmed death ligand 1 (PD-1/PD-L1), neurotropic tropomyosin receptor kinase (NTRK) gene fusion, poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) and targets of the phosphoinositide-3 kinase (PI3K)/AKT/mTOR pathway and therapeutic vaccines against human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16) E6 and E7 antigen were identified. Conclusions Different agents are currently under investigation. The available literature and ongoing trials of the emerging therapeutic approaches will be reviewed concisely. Whether they will enlarge our therapeutic possibilities in advanced cervical cancer remains to be seen. To date, only the PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor pembrolizumab has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for advanced cervical cancer.