What Is Immunotherapy?
Immunotherapy is a form of cancer treatment that uses the body’s natural immune system to fight malignant cells and destroy them. When discussing immunotherapy for cancer, the human immune system’s defensive mechanisms are improved via different methods to find and eliminate cancerous cells more efficiently.
In this article, the experts from Carreras Medical Center in Hialeah talk about the efficiency of immunotherapy for cancer, discuss the different types, and will talk about the most common immunotherapy side effects as well.
How Does Immunotherapy for Cancer Work?
As you may know, the immune system’s main job is to provide protection from viruses, bacteria, allergens, and even damaged cells that can lead to potential issues. The immune system has specific cells that patrol the human body for these intruders. They are also in charge of destroying damaged cells that can potentially become cancerous and start developing as tumors, ultimately spreading throughout the body.
The problem is that cancerous cells can effectively dodge the immune system’s defense mechanisms. This is where immunotherapy for cancer comes in as it can:
- Help the body produce more immune cells to locate and eliminate cancer cells.
- Train the immune system to become better at finding and killing cells.
Usually, healthcare experts use immunotherapy as an initial treatment for metastatic or already spreading cancer types. Often, this method is combined with targeted therapy, chemotherapy, and other cancer treatments.
There are several types of immunotherapy methods available, each using different elements of the human immune system.
The Different Types of Immunotherapy
These can include:
Checkpoint inhibitors
Actually, the body has different counter-security measures, so-called checkpoints, to keep the immune system from overdoing its job and attacking healthy cells. For example, you have your T-cells (white blood cells) that eliminate cancer cells and protect from infection. In their cases, the immune checkpoints connect with the T-cells’ surface proteins and signal the cells when to turn on and off. In the case of immunotherapy for checkpoint inhibitors, immunotherapy drugs break this signal, and, in turn, the T-cells keep destroying malignant cells.
Immunotherapy drugs that inhibit these checkpoints are usually used in treating various advanced cancers or malignancies that can’t be treated with surgery.
Cancer vaccines
Cancer vaccines are immunotherapy drugs that can help train your immune system to fight cancer. They help the body identify cancerous cells and antigens. To this day, medical experts are researching different ways to make cancer vaccines and to make them even more efficient. For example, the FDA has approved one such vaccine that uses a particular immune cell that can respond to specific prostate cancer cell antigens.
Monoclonal antibody therapy
This immunotherapy type uses artificial antibodies to help the immune system become more efficient in eliminating cancer cells. These lab-made antibodies may attack specific parts of malignant cells, like blocking the abnormal proteins in them. They can also deliver a special mixture of toxins, drugs, or radioactive materials into these cells, killing them in the process. That’s why most providers consider this method targeted therapy.
So far, the FDA has approved over 60 different monoclonal immunotherapy drugs that can treat several cancer types.
Adoptive cell therapy or T-cell transfer
This method can improve the immune system’s capacity to eliminate malignant cells. Doctors take the patient’s immune cells and grow them in artificial conditions (in a lab). Once grown, they reinsert the cells back into the patient’s body, where they can destroy cancerous cells.
Usually, two different methods are used, namely Cart T-cell therapy and tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy.
- Tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy: Typically, TIL cells sneak closer or directly into the cancerous cells, but they can’t eliminate the cells, nor can they prevent the cancerous cells from sending suppressing signals to the immune system. With TIL therapy, providers grow stronger and larger cells and then return to cancerous tumors; they become more efficient in killing these cells and disrupting their suppressive signals.
- CAR T-cell therapy: This type of immunotherapy makes the body’s T-cells more efficient at fighting cancer. Instead of taking the checkpoint-inhibiting route, this method makes the T-cells smarter and stronger, and they are able to track down and kill even disguised antigens.
Immune system modulators
These are substances that can boost the immune system’s response to cancer. They can be cytokines or immunomodulatory drugs.
- Cytokines: These proteins help with the immune system’s defensive responses. They signal the immune system when there’s an intruder in the body (like malignant cells). They can help coordinate attacks on cancerous targets. They can also signal healthy cells to live longer. Usually, providers use two methods for cytokine immunotherapy:
- Interleukins These proteins start immune responses and help cell communication. The IL-2 interleukin increases the body’s white cell count (both B- and T-cells), which helps eliminate cancer cells.
- Interferons: These cytokines help the immune system slow down cancerous cell growth and fight malignant cells.
- Immunomodulatory drugs: These are also referred to as biologic response modifiers. These immunotherapy drugs can boost the immune system and keep tumors from forming new blood vessels. Experts may use this type of therapy to help people with specific lymphoma types.
Potential Immunotherapy Side Effects
Unfortunately, immunotherapy may lead to unwanted side effects, just like most other cancer treatments. While immunotherapy aids the body to be more efficient in the process of fighting cancer, the immune cells may also attack healthy cells. This can lead to the inflammation of healthy tissue (immune-related adverse effects or irAE)
Around 20% of immunotherapy patients experience irAE side effects such as:
- Itchy rashes
- Vomiting and nausea
- Fatigue
- A decrease in thyroid hormone levels
Administering Immunotherapy Drugs
Typically, patients receive therapy through IV infusions on a weekly, daily, monthly basis, or even cyclically. The latter includes a rest period after a session, with the break giving the body time to produce more healthy cells.
Usually, the length of the treatment will depend on the type and stage of cancer, the type of immunotherapy drug, and the body’s response to therapy.
Benefits and Potential Risks
For the most part, immunotherapy may prove to be effective if other treatment options have failed to stop the malignancy from spreading.
Still, it’s important to remember that it doesn’t work on every type of cancer and may not work for every cancer patient. They also have specific side effects that patients need to handle.
Learn More From Experts
Immunotherapy can be an effective way to control malignancies and help people battling the disease. It can potentially slow down or shrink tumors. This promising treatment method is producing more and more benefits, and as medical science progresses, researchers are finding new ways to improve the treatment methods and their effectiveness.
If you want to learn more about immunotherapy, request your appointment at Carreras Medical Center today.
