Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy is a type of treatment that “manipulates” the immune system to treat cancer

Immune system – the network of cells, tissues, and organs that protects the body from diseases, such as those caused by bacteria or viruses

Significant advances have been made in the last few years in immunotherapy, which is now seen as one the most promising areas for cancer treatment. Since 2010, several clinical trials using immunotherapies, often against late-stage tumors previously considered incurable, have shown remarkable results.

Furthermore, immunotherapy also has a unique characteristic among cancer treatments: because it relies on the body's natural defense mechanism (the immune system), it can create an immunological memory.

What is an immunological memory?

When we first encounter a disease, our immune system takes some time to produce enough cells to defeat the microorganism behind it. On the next encounter(s), however, the response is much faster, often eliminating the bug even before we develop symptoms.

The reason is the immunological memory: fast attacking “primed” cells left behind after a first encounter with a disease. They act as guards against that particular type of microbe.

This is also how our "normal" vaccines work, except that those our first contain an inactive version of an infectious microorganism, which, without causing disease, creates an immunological memory to protect us from that infection in the future.

When immunotherapy can generate an immunological memory against a tumor, our ability to attack it will remain after the end of the treatment, guarding and destroying any cancer cells left behind, preventing cancer recurrence.

Although much more research is needed, there are already reports of patients with allegedly incurable advanced skin cancers, who, after immunotherapy, have stayed free of disease for what is now a long time.

Immunotherapy is mainly done in two ways:

Using components from the immune system produced in the laboratory, for example, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs or in the singular, mAb)
By boosting the patient’s natural immune response against the cancer

Different types of agents can also be used in immunotherapy. We will talk here about those currently most in use - monoclonal antibodies – and about some promising new results using cancer vaccines .