Development of red blood cell autoantibodies following treatment with checkpoint inhibitors: a new class of anti-neoplastic, immunotherapeutic agents associated with immune dysregulation.

Ipilimumab, nivolumab, and pembrolizumab represent a new class of immunotherapeutic drugs for treating patients with advanced cancer. Known as checkpoint inhibitors, these drugs act to upregulate the cellular and humoral immune response to tumor antigens by inhibiting T-cell autoregulation. As a consequence, they can be associated with immune-related adverse events (irAEs) due to loss of self-tolerance, including rare cases of immune-related cytopenias.