Cancer Treatment Response to Checkpoint Inhibitors Is Associated with Cytomegalovirus Infection
Article information
Cureus. 2020 Jan; 12(1): e6670.
Published online 2020 Jan 15. doi: 10.7759/cureus.6670
Abstract
Programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1) and programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) checkpoint inhibitors induce tumor response by activating the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer. Tumors with high tumor mutational burden or those that express high levels of PD-1/PD-L1 are more responsive to PD1/PDL1 inhibitors. There is much interest in determining how to improve response to PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors. We report a case of a patient with metastatic bladder cancer who was primarily resistant to treatment with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors, then had a complete response after developing cytomegalovirus infection.
Keywords: immune therapy, cmv infection, urothelial carcinoma, pd-1 inhibitor, malignancy, oncology
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7026877/