Predictive Biomarkers for Immunotherapy in Melanoma

Advanced melanoma is an aggressive tumor that is difficult to treat. Yet new immunotherapeutic strategies are dramatically improving clinical outcomes. Especially Dendritic Cell (DC) vaccination shows promising outcomes at relative low cost when compared to Adoptive Cell Therapy (ACT) and immune checkpoint inhibition. However, not all patients respond to immunotherapy equally and the costly treatments can cause severe toxicities. Therefore, identification of predictive biomarkers to enable selection of patients that are eligible for immunotherapies is of utmost importance in order to improve treatment efficacy and reduce overall cost as well as toxicities. Focus of current investigations lies on the composition of the tumor microenvironment, as an immune-active tumor microenvironment seems to be beneficial for the effect of immunotherapy. Here, we review immunotherapies in melanoma with focus on immune checkpoint inhibition and DC vaccination. Our objective is to give an overview on the recent state of predictive biomarkers for immunotherapy in melanoma.