Research progress on active ingredients from traditional Chinese medicine as inhibitors of PD-1/PD-L1 of cancer immune checkpoint / 药学实践杂志

Tumor immunotherapy has become a new cancer treatment which has been expected to eliminate tumors. Immune checkpoint inhibitors, especially programmed death-1 (PD-1) and programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) antibodies, have achieved significant clinical efficacy in the treatment of solid tumors. But biologics possess disadvantages such as strong immunogenicity and high cost. Therefore, the discovery of small molecule drugs as immune checkpoint inhibitors may overcome the shortcomings of biologics and become a new challenge for future tumor immunotherapy. The active small molecules from traditional Chinese medicine that inhibit the expression of PD-1/PD-L1 and their regulatory effects on the tumor immune microenvironment were reviewed in this paper.