It is not uncommon to have a friend, a family member, or even an acquaintance with cancer. Sadly, cancer is currently the second leading cause of death in America. There are many forms of treatment, from chemotherapy to surgery to radiation therapy. One of the newer and more promising forms of cancer therapy is immunotherapy. Cancer cells produce molecules that cause T-cells, the immune cells that kill cancer cells, to stop recognizing cancer cells as harmful. Immunotherapy drugs work to stop the effects of the molecules, allowing the T-cells to once again recognize and target the cancer cells. Immunotherapy encompasses treatments that can do many things to a patient’s immune system, including providing supplements and boosts, making the system work harder, or making it more efficient in targeting cancer cells. These treatments also have the benefit of being less harmful to the patients.
There are currently three main types of immunotherapy treatments that are being used for cancer: monoclonal antibodies, cancer vaccines, and non-specific immunotherapies. Monoclonal antibodies are man-made immune system proteins that can be designed to attack very specific targets in cancer cells. Cancer vaccines can contain cancer cells, parts of cells, and antigens. These are different from regular vaccines because they try to stimulate the immune system to specifically attack cancer cells and diseases that already exist. Non-specific cancer immunotherapies do not stimulate the immune system to specifically attack cancer cells, but they do provide a boost to a patient’s immune system, allowing them to provide a better immune response against cancer cells and be good supplements to other immunotherapies.
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Recent studies have shown great promise in the future of the treatment. A study showed that the combined use of the immunotherapy drugs, ipilimumab and nivolumab, stopped the spread of melanoma for almost a year in almost 60& of the cases. There have also been studies that showed immunotherapy working for lung cancer. Almost 20% of lung cancer patients who used nivolumab, an immunotherapy drug, showed improved conditions and longer lifespans.
The use of immunotherapy as a cancer treatment is still in its infant stage, and there is still a lot to be developed before it can be hailed as a cure to cancer. Currently, the immunotherapy drugs approved by the FDA have side-effects that include fatigue, lung problems, flu-like symptoms, etc. The long-term effects of the treatment have yet to be studied intensively, but there is a great amount of hope for progress in the future.
Feature Image Source: Steve Davis
