Antiangiogenics and immunotherapies in cervical cancer: an update and future’s view

Daniela Luvero, Francesco Plotti, Salvatore Lopez, Giuseppe Scaletta, Stella Capriglione, Roberto Montera, Gianina Antonelli, Sara Ciuffreda, Raffaella Carassiti, Alice Oliveti, Roberto Angioli

Despite availability of primary and secondary prevention measures, cervical cancer (CC) persists as one of the most common cancers among women around the world, and more than 70% of cases are diagnosed at advanced stages. Although significant progress has been made in the treatment of CC, around 15-61% of patients develop a recurrence in lymph nodes or distant sites within the first 2 years of completing treatment and the prognosis for these patients remains poor. During the last decades, in an attempt to improve the outcome in these patients, novel agents as combination therapy that target known dysfunctional molecular pathways have been developed with the most attention to the inhibitors of the angiogenesis process. One therapeutic target is the vascular endothelial growth factor, which has been shown to play a key role in tumor angiogenesis, not only for growth of new tissue but also in tumor proliferation. Bevacizumab is recognized as a potent antiangiogenic agent in ovarian cancer but has also demonstrated encouraging antitumor activity in recurrent CC. Moreover, other antiangiogenic agents were recently under study including: sunitinib, sorafenib, pazopanib, cediranib and nintedanib with interesting preliminary results. Moreover, over the last few years there has been increasing interest in cellular immunotherapy as a strategy to harness the immune system to fight tumors. This article focuses on recent discoveries about antiangiogenic agents and immunotherapies in the treatment of CC highlighting on future's view.