Celebrating the 15th anniversary of Immunotherapy: a reflection on 2022

Happy New Year to our wonderful readers, esteemed authors, hard-working academics and all those in between!

I would like to welcome you to the 15th volume of Immunotherapy. In this foreword, I will discuss content highlights from volume 14 and the demographics of our authorship.

At the start of the year, we continued to see many papers covering the immunotherapeutic treatments of COVID-19, which remains of high importance to patients and researchers alike. Toward the later months of the year, we received a multitude of articles discussing immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) as they continue to be at the forefront of the field.

Excitingly, we have a special focus issue that is due to be released this year. The issue is titled ‘The evolving landscape of immunotherapy in biliary tract cancer: is it time for a revolution?’ and has been guest edited by experts in the field, Dr Alessandro Rizzo and Dr Angela Ricci.

Top five most-read articles of 2022

Volume 14 saw the publishing of high-impact articles that covered a variety of topics, from allergen treatments to dermatitis and autoimmune diseases to arthritis. Our top five read articles of 2022, which can be seen in Table 1 were all of different article types. Articles published ranged from reviews to drug evaluations to research articles and even plain language summaries.

Last year, Immunotherapy published its first patient-friendly plain language summary, which was incredibly well received by our readers. The summary described a comparison of abrocitinib and dupilimab as treatments for atopic dermatitis and became our most-read article of 2022.

‘Overview of subcutaneous immunoglobulin 16.5% in primary and secondary immunodeficiency diseases’ by Kobayashi et al., was our most-read review article of 2022, ranking second overall [2]. The article reviews the subcutaneous treatment of immunoglobin therapy 16.5%, providing a brief overview of the development and manufacturing, efficacy and safety and future perspectives of the treatment.

Ghebeh et al.’s, paper was our most-read short communication article in 2022 [3]. The study involved treating metastatic triple-negative breast cancer patients with the ICI, durvalumab while tracking the peripheral blood eosinophil count. An investigation of this correlation has been carried out for several other types of cancer; however, nothing had been reported on metastatic triple-negative breast cancer making this the first article covering the subject.

Berentsen et al. evaluated the usage of the drug sutimlimab in the treatment of cold agglutination disease [4]. The title of the paper effectively describes what the article covers; why, how and for who? The engaging nature of this title has proven successful in drawing our readers in.

Unsurprisingly, an editorial discussing the effects of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine remained one of our most-read papers of the year. Malek et al. discussed the mRNA vaccine’s impact on patients receiving ICI therapy and how it played into their weakened immune systems [5]. The paper successfully captures the importance of the vaccine and its preventative nature not only for those undergoing ICI treatment but for the wider public as well.

The top cited Immunotherapy articles in 2022

When considering the impact of a published article, it is conventional to look at the number of times it has been cited. Table 2 shows the top three most-cited articles from Immunotherapy in 2022, with all papers covering an aspect of COVID-19. Although the articles cover a similar subject, the article types are varied: a review, a commentary, and a case report.

The most cited article by Chavda et al. was a review that provided insight into the immunotherapeutic treatment of COVID-19 across the globe [6]. The effectiveness of available drugs and vaccines was evaluated by the authors, who come to conclude that a pro-vaccination standpoint should be taken when faced with a pandemic as the most effective preventative measure.

Following the theme of therapeutics in COVID-19, a commentary by Chavda et al. examined the Omicron variant and the immunotherapeutic treatments that can manage it [7]. The article details the mutations found within the Omicron variant including their spike protein region and mutation code, where the authors then emphasized the importance of receiving the booster vaccine.

On the other hand, Lasagna et al. submitted a case report in which a patient receiving immunotherapy treatment for cancer developed hepatitis following the COVID-19 vaccine [8]. The authors reported that the mRNA vaccine triggered an immune mediated reaction with eosinophil infiltration of the liver along with the lack of antibodies ultimately causing the patient to develop both hepatitis and colitis. When comparing this to the earlier mentioned paper by Malek et al., [5] the ability to address controversy through evidence-based peer review provides interesting insights when looking at patients who received the vaccine while undergoing immunotherapy treatment.

Social media and news engagement social media are fantastic tools that can improve the reach of scientific research. Table 3 summarizes the top articles by social media and news engagement in 2022.

Landers et al. provided an incredibly useful research article on the ever-growing topic of immunotherapy concerning allergen treatment [9]. Through the use of murine models, the authors found that by utilizing a microneedle-based approach to epicutaneous immunotherapy in patients with a peanut allergy, the delivery of the immunotherapy became favorable for treatment.

The review of ICIs in luminal gastrointestinal malignancies by Lefler et al. discusses measuring dMMR/MSI-H and TMB-H biomarkers and how they can indicate a tumoral response to immunotherapy treatment [10].

Eksin et al. wrote a case series reporting the use of secukinumab, a monoclonal antibody, to treat both ankylosing spondyloarthritis and psoriatic arthritis linked to multiple sclerosis [11]. Not only did they report the results of their patients, but the authors also carried out a literature review to further support their study.

The geographic spread of authorship

Over the last year, most of our published content was submitted by experts in Asia (44%), Europe (34%) and North America (17%) (Figure 1). This was followed by 4% from South America and 1% from Australasia. Unfortunately, we did not see any submitted content from Africa; however, to address this in the upcoming year, we will be commissioning more articles from African research institutes.

A warm thank you!

Immunotherapy happily accepts unsolicited articles of all types which can be submitted via our ScholarOne homepage. If you would like to reach out regarding a potential manuscript idea, offer feedback on our journal, topics of interest we should focus on, or anything else, just send us an email or send us a message on Twitter (@fsgimt).

The Immunotherapy editorial team would like to warmly thank its authors, readers, editorial board members and reviewers; without your continued work and support, the journal would not be standing. We greatly look forward to working with you all again in 2023!