Cancer Immunotherapies

This book presents the clinical scope of cancer immunotherapeutic agents for solid tumors and Hematologic malignancies, elaborates on the scientific details of their modes of action, and presents the impact of these agents on oncology, patients and the broader healthcare system. At present, cancer immunotherapies fall broadly into three categories: immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), adoptive T cell therapies, and cancer vaccines which have distinct mechanisms of action. Immune checkpoint inhibitors rely upon disrupting tumor antigen recognition as self by the immune system through inhibition of checkpoint molecules. Adoptive T cell therapies involve the engineering of T cells ex vivo to target and destroy tumor cells.

The first part of this book will provide an overview of the discovery and mechanistic details of the technology. The second part will be devoted to elaborating on the clinical outcomes, successes and limitations for specific tumor subtypes, which includes bothsolid tumors and hematologic malignances for both pediatric and adult populations. As such, the book offers a valuable resource for oncologists, hematologists, and all those seeking an up-to-date overview of cancer immunotherapies.

Priya Hays, Ph.D. is an accomplished science writer, having written and published four books as well as having authored over twenty publications in journals as varied as the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, L’Esprit Createur, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Genetics in Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation and Studies, and Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology and Public Health. The publication of the first edition of Advancing Healthcare Through Personalized Medicine brought Dr. Hays much prominence and credibility in the personalized and genomic medicine field. She was elected to three prestigious medical societies (as Allied Physician/Doctoral Scientist of the American Society of Clinical Oncology; as Affiliate Member of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics; and as Member of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer). Additionally, she has published an editorial on personalized medicine in the journal Genetics in Medicine and a paper in collaboration with two physicians at the University of California, San Diego Health System on clinical care of patients taking immunotherapies and managing their adverse effects in the journal Future Oncology. She is also serving as Guest Editor for an upcoming volume on cancer immunotherapies in the Cancer Treatment and Research series.  She completed her postdoctoral research fellowship in the Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine, at Dartmouth Medical School. She has an A.B. with Honors from Dartmouth College in Biochemistry and Comparative Literature, an M.S. in Genetics from the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego.