ReviewJournal for immunotherapy of cancer2025
Why has immune "checkpoint" therapy failed in most clinical trials?
Review in Journal for immunotherapy of cancer, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors Journey: From Early Promise to Lasting Impact.Journal of immunotherapy and precision oncology · 2026Review
- Building clinical translation on squares of discovery.Nature reviews. Immunology · 2026Article
- The Right Key, the Wrong Lock: TIGIT Checkpoint Blockade and the Road to Precision Immunotherapy.Pharmaceutics · 2026Review
- Evaluating Alkaline Phosphatase-Instructed Self-Assembly of d‑Peptide Diesters for Selectively Inhibiting Immunosuppressive Cancer Cells.ACS omega · 2026Article
- PD-1 regulates latent effector differentiation of thymic cytotoxic CD8Nature communications · 2026Article
- Prediction of Patients' Response to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors Using Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging of Lymphocytes.Biomedicines · 2026Article
- Tumor cell intrinsic mechanisms of immune escape.Cell communication and signaling : CCS · 2026Review
- Targeting the neuro-immune crosstalk in breast cancer brain metastases.Journal for immunotherapy of cancer · 2026Review
- A Trojan horse nanoplatform overcoming delivery barriers for targeted gene immunotherapy of colorectal cancer.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Cancer immunotherapy targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway has demonstrated efficacy across a range of common solid tumors and some hematopoietic malignancies. Despite these groundbreaking successes, the clinical development of other 'checkpoint inhibitors' targeting molecules like TIM-3, TIGIT, ICOS and others, has largely fallen short, often showing minimal clinical benefit even in combination with anti-PD therapy. This article explores three key hypotheses that help explain the disparity in therapeutic success: (1) the absence of tumor- specific immunosuppressive logic in many checkpoint targets, (2) the dominance-but not redundancy-of immune evasion mechanisms within the tumor microenvironment (TME), and (3) the emergence of therapy-induced resistance. This is not intended as a comprehensive review of the literature. Instead, it highlights select evidence to explain past failures and to illuminate a more strategic, biologically informed path forward.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.