Differentiation therapy is directed to the self-renewing cancer stem cells, as well as their progeny transit amplifying cells, to force them to mature to terminal differentiation. Differentiation therapy is effective in treatment of neuroblastomas and myeloid leukemias. Checkpoint inhibition therapy removes blocks to cancer reactive T-killer cells and allows them to react to malignant cells and limit the growth of cancer. The percentage of patients with a given cancer that responds to either therapy is less than hoped for, and the duration of response is variable. Multiplying the response rate (percentage of patients responding to therapy) by the duration of response may be used to derive a survival score for patients treated with differentiation therapy or checkpoint inhibition. By this criterion, differentiation therapy gives better survival scores than checkpoint inhibition. Yet, checkpoint inhibition is considered a great success, mostly because it may be applied to many different types of cancer, and differentiation therapy is considered relatively ineffective because it is limited to a few specific cancers. On the other hand, the cost of checkpoint inhibition treatment is 10-20 times more per patient than that of differentiation therapy. Hopefully, future combined treatments and advances in both approaches will increase the effectiveness of these cancer treatments.
Keywords: Cancer stem cells; checkpoint inhibition; differentiation therapy; myeloid leukemia; survival scores.