Opinions

Much progress has been made in the standardisation of pathological response but optimising viable tumour cutoffs for predicting long-term outcome after different treatment modalities and by histological type remain key areas for investigation 

Advances made in the treatment of advanced lung cancer are now being introduced at earlier stages of disease  

The length of immunotherapy course for metastatic lung cancer was arbitrarily set at 2 years in clinical trials, but definitive studies investigating the optimum duration against the risk-benefit profile are lacking

Vaccination among cancer patients should not affect their participation in clinical trials and levels of acceptance of the vaccine are high 

Over the last decade, much progress has been made in developing a range of antibody–drug conjugates to treat breast cancer, with the construction of bespoke agents for individual patients and exciting prospect for the future

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is on course to become standard treatment for selected high-risk soft tissue sarcomas but effects in low-risk disease are unclear

Despite age-specific difficulties, increased understanding of sarcoma biology is leading the way to the development of new treatment strategies 

The future is in the hands of tools built on combinations of biomarkers as no single biomarker is likely to reflect the complexity of the tumour microenvironment or account for tumour evolution

The complexity of identifying and clinically validating immunotherapy biomarkers can be addressed by broadening tumour sampling and expanding the characterisation methodologies used 

In-depth understanding of immunological cellular mechanisms provides the basis to explore new ways to modulate the immune system for more effective treatment of cancer