BACKGROUND: Lung cancer occupies the leading position of cancer incidence and 
mortality worldwide, including in the Czech Republic. Despite significant 
advances in systemic oncology treatments, lung cancer still has the worst 
prognosis, which is driving the need for innovative therapies and methods to 
treat this disease. Immunotherapy is a developing area of systemic oncology 
treatment, which has recently begun to be significantly applied to patients with 
lung carcinoma. The most useful type of immunotherapy currently employs 
checkpoint inhibitors, including CTLA-4 inhibitors (ipilimumab and tremelimumab) 
and PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors (nivolumab, pembrolizumab, durvalumab, and avelumab). 
Except for monotherapy, different combinations of these inhibitors or 
combinations between one more of these inhibitors and chemotherapy or targeted 
treatment are being actively studied. Despite intensive investigations, 
anti-tumor vaccines and cytokines have not had an important impact on the 
treatment of lung cancer. Checkpoint inhibitors have yielded favorable results, 
especially for the treatment of advanced (i.e., stage IIIB and IV) non-small 
cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and are being extensively investigated for the 
treatment of SCLC.
AIM: The aim of this review was to summarize the most important achievements, 
possibilities, and perspectives of modern immunotherapy for the treatment of 
patients with lung cancer.
CONCLUSION: Immunotherapy is an important tool in todays arsenal of oncology 
treatments, and for patients with lung cancer it offers the hope of prolonging 
life and img iprovints quality.Key words: immunotherapy - lung cancer - NSCLC - 
SCLC - checkpoint inhibitors This work was supported by National Sustainability 
Programme I No. LO1503 provided by Ministry of education, youth and sports and 
program No. 17-30748A devided by The Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic. 
The authors declare they have no potential conflicts of interest concerning 
drugs, products, or services used in the study. The Editorial Board declares 
that the manuscript met the ICMJE recommendation for biomedical 
papers.Submitted: 31. 8. 2017Accepted: 7. 9. 2017.