For the past decade, UofL Health – Brown Cancer Center has been at the forefront of developing and testing immunotherapies including antibodies that activate immune cells and autologous that can directly kill cancer cells. These, along with other combinations of immunotherapies are being tested in clinical trials.
What is immunotherapy?
Immunotherapy is a treatment that uses the immune system to fight cancer. Recent discoveries about the way the immune system regulates itself have translated into new drugs that can not only prevent cancer from spreading and killing, but can also eradicate cancer completely from a patient’s body.How does it work?
Immunotherapy treatments can work in different ways. While some immunotherapies simply boost the body’s immune system, others train the immune system to specifically attack cancer cells. The body’s immune system protects one from infections and other diseases by protecting it from germs and abnormal substances it finds in the body. If the immune system finds something it doesn’t recognize, it attacks that substance and anything containing that substance. When it comes to cancer, however, the immune system doesn’t always recognize cancer cells as foreign or the fight response isn’t strong enough to destroy the cancer. Researchers have found ways (through immunotherapy approaches) to trigger the immune system to recognize these cancer cells and boost the response so that it kills the cancer cells.How is it different from chemotherapy?
These new immunotherapies are very different from chemotherapies. Chemotherapy was developed as tiny, very toxic chemicals designed to target DNA and kill cancer cells. Instead, immunotherapies activate the patient’s own immune system to selectively kill cancer cells. The majority of patients who receive immunotherapies do not suffer from significant side effects.Types of immunotherapy
According to the American Cancer Society and Dr. Jason Chesney, the main types of immunotherapy now being used to treat cancer include:- Monoclonal antibodies: These are man-made versions of immune system proteins. Antibodies can be very useful in treating cancer because they can be designed to attack a very specific part of a cancer cell.
- Immune checkpoint inhibitors: These drugs basically take the ‘brakes’ off the immune system, which helps it recognize and attack cancer cells.
- Cellular therapies: The patient's own immune cells are taken from the blood or a tumor and expanded and/or modified to kill the patient's cancer cells.
- Cancer vaccines: Vaccines are substances put into the body to start an immune response against certain diseases. We usually think of them as being given to healthy people to help prevent infections, but some vaccines can help prevent or treat cancer.
- Other, non-specific immunotherapies: These treatments boost the immune system in a general way, but this can still help the immune system attack cancer cells.
