Treating Cancer with Immunotherapy: Are Results There?
Immunotherapy is the kind of cancer treatment
which boosts the immune system to fight cancer. The immune system helps the body to fight
infections and host of other diseases. It consists
of WBCs and the lymph system. Its can be best termed as a biological therapy that uses
substances from the living organisms to treat cancer.
How does It work? As part of the normal function, the immune
system detects and destroys the abnormal cells,
which prevents and curbs the growth on various kinds of cancers. Immune cells are also found
around the tumours. It’s a sign that the immune system is working to contain the tumour. Patients who tumour contains tumour-
infiltrating lymphocytes often are in the better
medical condition who don’t have them. Although the immune system can prevent or
slow the growth of cancer, the cancerous cells have a way to avoid the destruction by the
immune system. For instance, the cancerous
cells may underdo various genetic changes that make them less visible to the immune system.
They have proteins on their surface which turn off the immune cells. These also change the
normal cells around the tumour so they can
interfere with how the immune system responds to the cancer cells. With the help of the
immunotherapy for cancer, the immune system can better fight against cancer.
Types of Immunotherapy There is a different kind of treatments which is available to treat cancer.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors are the
drugs that are used to block the immune systems. There is a normal part of the
immune system and also keep the immune system from being too strong. Once these are blocked, the drugs allow the immune cells to respond in a better way to cancer disease.
T Cell therapy in another kind of
immunotherapy which is a treatment that boosts the natural ability of the T-cells to
fight cancer. During this treatment, the
immune cells are taken from the tumour.
Those cells which are most active against the cancer are selected and changed in the lab
to attack the cancer-causing cells in a better way. These are then grown in large batches and are injected in the body once again
using a needle. The therapy is also called as adoptive cell therapy or adoptive immune cell therapy.
Therapeutic antibodies which are immune system proteins are created in the lab are designed to bind specific targets on the
cancer cells. Monoclonal antibodies set-out
the cancer cells so that they are better seen
and destroyed by the immune system. Such antibodies are called immunotherapy.
Treatment vaccines also work well against
cancer cells. These boost the immune system response to the cancer cells. The treatment vaccines are different from the one that helps prevent the disease.
Which Disease Types are Treated? Immunotherapy drugs are approved, and they are capable of treating different kinds of
cancers. However, the immunotherapy is not yet
widely accepted as compared to the surgery or chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Finally, Immunotherapy for cancer gives results in
treating various types. But its effectiveness and usage are dependent on the acceptance by the patients.