What Is Cancer Immunotherapy and What Are Its Types?

Overview

Immunotherapy is a treatment used fight cancer, similar to chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and a part of mainstream cancer treatment. Immunotherapy uses a person’s own immune system to fight cancer by:

• Stimulating the immune system to work harder and smarter to attack cancer cells
• Giving the immune system components, for example, man-made immune system proteins

Immunotherapy is also sometimes known as biologic therapy or biotherapy. Immunotherapy has become an integral part of mainstream cancer treatment in a last few decades, and newer types of immune treatments are being studied still. Immunotherapy has the potential to impact how cancer will be treated even more efficiently in the future. rnImmunotherapy treatments work in different ways, e.g. some boost the body’s immune system in a general way, while others help train the immune system to attack cancer cells specifically. Immunotherapy has also been seen to work better for some types of cancers than for others. It is also used in combination with other types of cancer treatments.

Why Is Immunotherapy Needed?

If the immune system could fight cancer on its own, there wouldn’t be any need of cancer treatments. The immune system doesn’t always recognize cancer cells as foreign, as they develop in the body itself. Other times, the immune system may recognize the cancer cells, but its response might not be strong enough to destroy the cancer cells. Thus, there are certain limits the immune system has in fighting cancer, as people with healthy immune cells have also been known to develop cancer. Immunotherapy helps the immune system recognize the cancer cells and strengthens its response so that it destroys them.

Types of Immunotherapy

These are the types of immunotherapy mainly used to treat cancer these days:

• Monoclonal antibodies

  These are the man-made version of the immune system proteins. Antibodies can be very useful in treating cancer because they can be designed to attack a very specific part of the cancer cells.

• Immune checkpoint inhibitors

  These drugs in a way take the brakes off of the immune system, which helps it recognize and attack cancer cells.

• Cancer vaccines

  Vaccines are substances put into the body to start an immune response against certain diseases. Vaccination has been used and is still used to prevent infections from numerous diseases, and cancer vaccines can help prevent or treat cancer.

• Other non-specific immunotherapies

  These treatments aim at boosting the immune system in a general way, and help the immune system attack cancer cells.

There are cancer hospitals in Patna which have immunotherapy available, along with top experienced oncologists in Patna for treatment of all types of cancers. These cancer hospitals are rising quickly on the list of medically advanced cancer hospitals in India.