Immunotherapy in anaplastic thyroid cancer

Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is one of the worst human malignancies, with an associated median survival of only 5 months. It is resistant to conventional thyroid cancer therapies, including radioiodine and thyroid-stimulating hormone suppression. Cancer immunotherapy has emerged over the past few decades as a transformative approach to treating a wide variety of cancers. However, immunotherapy for ATC is still in the experimental stage. This review will cover several strategies of immunotherapy and discuss the possible application of these strategies in the treatment of ATC (such as targeted therapy for tumor-associated macrophages, cancer vaccines, adoptive immunotherapy, monoclonal antibodies and immune checkpoint blockade) with the hope of improving the prognosis of ATC in the future.