The treatment regimen is advancing in the world of oncology and the new ray of hope is Immunotherapy.
Immunotherapy -New treatment arm use patient’s immune cell to kill cancer cells.
The technique of Immunotherapy can be accomplished in the following ways:
- Stimulating the natural defense of a patient’s immune system to work harder
- Boosted properties for finding & killing cancer cells engineered in immune cells and like substances extracted from the host
- Engineered cells or proteins like substances just like immune system components and used to restore normal immune system working i.e. to find and attack cancer cells
Recently few decades of immunotherapy became an important pavement for treating some types of cancer. New immunotherapy treatments are unraveled and approved for working with the immune system at a very fast pace, better for some types of cancer than for others.
The function of the immune system – the immune system is referred to as the collection of organs, special cells, and substances that protect the host body from infections and certain other diseases. Immune cells and the substances travel through your body to protect it from germs that cause infections and also help protect from cancer in some ways to an extent.
The immune system is a tracker for substances normally found in the body and any new substance that the immune system doesn’t recognize is an alarm causing the attack to fight in defense mechanics. The immune system sees cancer cells as “foreign” and attacks them; in response can destroy cancer cells.
Although, the immune system has a tougher time targeting cancer cells because cancer starts from altered healthy cells & the immune system don’t always recognize them as foreign. This is clearly limited on the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. Sometimes the immune system doesn’t see the cancer cells as foreign.
To overcome this limitation, and to help the immune system recognize cancer cells by strengthening their response to destroy them; immunotherapy is a way, how a patient’s own body is actually getting rid of cancer.
Types of immunotherapy for cancer:
- Checkpoint inhibitors: drugs to ‘brakes’ off the immune system, which helps it recognize and attack cancer cells. Example: Nivolumab, Pembrolizumab, atezolizumab, Durvalumab, Avemumab, and Ipilimumab
- Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy: host T-cells (i.e. from a patient’s blood) are taken and mixed with a special virus that enables them to attach to tumor cells. By this these engineered cells when induced back to the patient can find, attach to, and kill the cancer cells. Specifically used in Blood cancer
- Cytokines: cytokines are small proteins that carry messages between cells to stimulate the immune cells to attack cancer and these are engineered or isolated to treat cancer like Interleukins and Interferons
- Immunomodulators: generally boost parts of the immune system to treat certain types of cancer are giving a good prognosis
- Cancer vaccines: Vaccines are started as an immune response against certain diseases and some vaccines can help prevent or treat cancer. For example- Cervical cancer vaccine /HPV Vaccine
- Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs or MoAbs): man-made versions of immune system proteins, can be very useful in treating cancer as can be designed to attack a very specific part of a cancer cell for inhibiting the process of carcinogenesis. Examples to be most famous are Rituximab, Trastuzumab, T-DM1, Bevacizumab, Daratumumab, etc.
Immunotherapy is used to Treat Cancer.
For more information on Immunotherapy and its role in Cancer, treatment learn from the best medical Oncologist in Jaipur city Dr. Tara Chand Gupta – having vast experience in treating Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Lung Cancers, Lymphoma. He can be reached at https://www.drtarachand.com/
