Novel immunotherapeutic drugs for the treatment of lung cancer

Purpose of review Cancer cells evade immune surveillance partly due to the immunosuppressive features of the tumor microenvironment (TME). Currently approved immuno-oncology drugs for the treatment of lung cancer are aimed to inhibit immune checkpoints, such as programmed death protein-1 (PD-1), PD ligand-1 (PD-L1) and cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen 4. Despite these, researchers are currently racing to create the optimal cancer immunotherapy treatments. Recent findings Novel immunotherapeutic drugs mainly act on activated immune cells and exert their therapeutic effects by enhancing antitumor responses. In this article, we review new therapies for the treatment of lung cancer that enhance T cell priming, remove coinhibitory signals, supply costimulatory signals and condition the TME. As more immunotherapeutic targets are in studies, designing multimodal strategies to provide greater efficacy with lower toxicity will be necessary.