How has immunotherapy revolutionised cancer treatment?

Dr.Parveen Jain, 3 mins read

It’s been over a century since immunotherapy revolutionised cancer treatment. But over the last 10 years, new developments in immunotherapy have changed the direction of cancer care, making the treatment more effective and improving the overall clinical outcome.

What is immunotherapy?
Immunotherapy, in essence, involves the use of drugs to jumpstart the body’s immune system to fight against cancer cells. It works by helping the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells. This approach marks a departure from traditional cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation therapy, which directly target the cancer cells.

This concept of stimulating and tweaking the immune system has brought a major paradigm shift in the approach to cancer treatment. It has become a standard treatment for many types of early and advanced-stage cancers and it is under trials for remaining types of malignancies.

The connection between the immune system and immunotherapy
Our immune system is the natural defence mechanism of the body that fights against diseases and foreign invaders. Usually, the immune system has the potential to identify and destroy faulty cells.

Our immune system has the inherent capability to distinguish between healthy and abnormal cells. When it functions optimally, it can even eliminate cancerous cells.

However, cancer cells sometimes find ways to escape from the immune system or suppress its activity. This allows cancer cells to proliferate unchecked.

Cancer develops when:

● The immune system is not strong enough to kill the cancer cells
● The cancer cells are producing signals to stop the immune system from attacking them
● The cancer cells escape or hide from the immune system

Immunotherapy aims to counteract these tactics and bolster the immune system's ability to recognize and destroy cancer cells.

How immunotherapy is revolutionising cancer treatment?
This approach is transforming cancer treatment in several critical ways. Unlike conventional treatments, which broadly target dividing cells, including healthy ones, immunotherapy is more precise.

By enhancing the immune system's ability to specifically detect and attack cancer cells, immunotherapy holds promise for greater efficacy with fewer side effects.

Moreover, immunotherapy has shown remarkable success in treating certain types of cancer that were previously considered untreatable. For some cancer patients, immunotherapy has led to long-term remission and, in some cases, a cure.
Common types of cancer immunotherapy
The following are the common types of immunotherapy used to treat several kinds of cancers:

● Checkpoint inhibitors: Our immune system has numerous checkpoints that distinguish normal and abnormal cells. These checkpoints engage when a protein on the surface of immune cells, especially T-cells, recognises and binds with partner proteins on other cells, like some tumour cells. After binding, an “off” signal goes to T-cells. This prevents the immune system from destroying cancer cells. Using checkpoint inhibitors prevents the binding process, thus allowing the T-cells to destroy cancer cells.

● Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy: In this therapy, the doctor takes some T-cells from the patient’s blood and then these T-cells are externally engineered to become active against cancer cells.

● mixes them with a special virus. This helps the T-cells learn how to attach to tumour cells. Then, these T-cells are again given back to the patient so that they can better fight against cancer.

● Cytokines: This type of immunotherapy uses small proteins that carry messages between cells (cytokines) to stimulate the immune system to attack cancer cells.

● Immunomodulators: These drugs modify some parts of the immune system so it can work more effectively to treat certain types of cancers.

● Cancer vaccines: These vaccines activate the immune system to respond against cancer cells.

● Oncolytic viruses: In this treatment, some viruses modified in the lab are used to infect and destroy certain tumour cells.

Takeaway!
Immunotherapy's impact on cancer treatment is nothing short of revolutionary. By leveraging the body's natural defence system, it has ushered in a new era of personalised and targeted cancer therapy. Thus, offering hope to countless patients and fundamentally changing the way we approach and combat this complex disease.