Current Immunotherapy Approaches for Malignant Melanoma

Abstract

Melanoma is one of the skin cancers caused by various causes. Since the patients often do not feel pain that melanoma is mistaken for benign skin diseases. However, melanoma has the risk of multiplying rapidly and spreading easily through metastasis. It is important to treat it through chemo- or radiotherapy after surgical resection. Immunotherapy is a relatively new cancer treatment, which has shown longer survival rates than conventional cancer treatments in some cases. Cytokines or immune checkpoint blockers are the common immunotherapy strategies for melanoma. However, there are still melanoma patients who have not been benefited by immunotherapies. To overcome the limitations of current immunotherapy approaches, studies are underway to find new immunomodulators and various combinational immunotherapies. In this review, the existing treatments for melanoma are introduced and efforts to find optimal immunotherapy conditions for melanoma treatment have been summarized. Attempts to study the immunotherapy of melanoma with biochip technologies that simulate the body's microenvironment have also been summarized.