[Recent advances of immunooncology in the treatment of solid tumours and haematological malignancies: the immune checkpoint inhibitors].

Cancer immunotherapy is coming of age, as outstanding results can be achieved in the therapy of cancer with poor prognosis by altering the patients' immune system and by promoting the immune response against tumours. Amongst immunotherapies, the immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) proved to be the most effective, primarily in the treatment of solid tumours, including melanoma, non-small cell lung carcinoma, and classical Hodgkin's lymphoma. The reason for this efficacy is the immunosuppressive microenvironment typical for many cancer types, directly and indirectly inhibiting effector T-cell responses. To date, three cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4) or programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) checkpoint inhibitors have been approved in Europe, and six in the USA. Furthermore, an increasing number of these drugs is available in the setting of clinical trials. For the optimal use of the numerous different ICIs there is an ever increasing need to identify reliable predictive biomarkers and to explore therapy-associated resistance mechanisms, which will represent the main challenge of the next years.