The treatment of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is becoming increasingly complex. Standard of care management for the past decade has been adjuvant chemotherapy following curative intent resection regardless of nodal status or tumour profile. With the increased incorporation of immunotherapy in NSCLC, especially in the locally advanced, unresectable, or metastatic settings, multiple studies have sought to assess its utility in early-stage disease. While there are suboptimal responses to neoadjuvant chemotherapy alone, there is a strong rationale for the use of neoadjuvant immunotherapy in tumour downstaging, based upon the concept of enhanced T cell priming at the time of a high tumour antigen burden, and demonstrated clinically in other solid tumours, such as melanoma. In the NSCLC cancer setting, currently over 20 combinations of chemoimmunotherapy in the neoadjuvant and perioperative setting have been studied with results variable. Multiple large phase III studies have demonstrated that neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy combinations result in significant advances in pathological response, disease free and overall survival which has led to practice change across the world. Currently, combination immunotherapy regimens with novel agents targeting alternate immunomodulatory pathways are now being investigated. Given this, the landscape of treatment in resectable early-stage NSCLC has become increasingly complex. This review outlines the literature of neoadjuvant and perioperative immunotherapy and discusses its potential benefits and complexities and ongoing considerations into future research.
Upper tract urothelial cancer (UTUC) are rare subsets of urothelial cancer, which typically present with more aggressive course. Molecular markers stratifying urothelial tumors as luminal subtype and non-luminal subtype tumors have been proposed to select patients who may have greater or lesser benefit from neoadjuvant systemic therapy in bladder cancer, though not yet evaluated in UTUC. Here, a single-institution study retrospectively obtained clinical and genomic information in patients with UTUC and evaluated four patient tumors using the Decipher Bladder® assay and Foundation Medicine® test. All four patients had non-luminal molecular subtype including basal (N = 4) and mixed basal/claudin-low (N = 2) subtypes. The best clinical response achieved was stable disease in a patient who had basal/claudin-low subtype with residual ypT3 after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. For the remaining three patients, all were treated with platinum-based chemotherapy for eventual metastatic disease but all three showed progressive disease with limited overall survival, highlighting their aggressive course. The non-luminal subtype and lack of FGFR alteration may partly explain the poor overall outcomes while the real-world benefit of next generation sequencing for clinical use in UTUC patients require further clarification in a larger cohort study.
Cancer remains a concern after years of research in this field. Conventional therapies such as chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery are available for cancer treatment, but they are characterized by various side effects. There are several immunological challenges that make it difficult for the immune system and conventional therapies to treat cancer. Some of these challenges include heterogeneity, resistance to medicines, and cancer relapse. Even advanced treatments like immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), which revolutionized cancer treatment, have associated toxicity and resistance further necessitate the exploration of alternative therapies. Anticancer peptides (ACPs) offer promising potential as cancer-fighting agents and address challenges such as treatment resistance, tumor heterogeneity, and metastasis. Although these peptides exist as components of the defense system in various plants, animals, fungi, etc., but can also be created synthetically and used as a new treatment measure. These peptides possess properties that make them appealing for cancer therapy, such as apoptosis induction, inhibition of angiogenesis, and cell membrane breakdown with low toxicity. Their capacity to specifically target cancer cells selectively holds promise for enhancing treatment environments as well as improving patients' quality of life. This review provides detailed insights into the different prospects of ACPs, including their characterization, use as immunomodulatory agents in cancer treatment, and their mechanistic details after addressing various immunological challenges in existing cancer treatment strategies. In conclusion, ACPs have promising potential as novel cancer therapeutics due to their target specificity and fewer side effects than conventional therapies.
Bladder cancer is a leading cancer type in men. The complexity of treatment in late-stage bladder cancer after systemic spread through the lymphatic system highlights the importance of modulating disease-free progression as early as possible in cancer staging. With current therapies relying on previous standards, such as platinum-based chemotherapeutics and immunomodulation with Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, researchers, and clinicians are looking for targeted therapies to stop bladder cancer at its source early in progression. A new era of molecular therapies that target specific features upregulated in bladder cancer cell lines is surfacing, which may be able to provide clinicians and patients with better control of disease progression. Here, we discuss multiple emerging therapies including immune checkpoint inhibitors of the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1)/programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) pathway, antibody-drug conjugates, modulation of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (AKT)/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) cell proliferation pathway, chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, and fibroblast growth factor receptor targeting. Together, these modern treatments provide potentially promising results for bladder cancer patients with the possibility of increasing remission and survival rates.

