Cardiotoxicity of Immune Therapy

Abstract

The advent of immunotherapy, particularly immune checkpoint inhibitors and chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, has ushered in a promising new era of treatment of patients with a variety of malignancies who historically had a poor prognosis. However, these therapies are associated with potentially life-threatening cardiovascular adverse effects. As immunotherapy evolves to include a wider variety of malignancies, risk stratification, prompt recognition, and treatment of cardiotoxicity will become increasingly important and hence cardiologists will need to play a fundamental role in the comprehensive care of these patients. This article reviews cardiotoxicity associated with contemporary immunotherapy and discusses potential management strategies.

Keywords: CAR T-cell therapy; Cardiotoxicity; Chimeric antigen receptor; Cytokine release syndrome; Immune checkpoint inhibitor; Immunotherapy; Myocarditis.