By Rizak Makkar
Immunotherapy is using your body's own immune system to fight cancer. There are couple of different ways to do it, one, we can stimulate our own immune system or rave it up so it recognizes cancer or two, we can give patient parts of the immune system such as proteins or antibodies that help the immune system fighting cancer. Often, this therapy is called biological therapy. Building on what is known about our own immune system and keeping foreign substances in check. This is come into fruition in just the past few years.
Although it had decades of research but not until 2010 was there a drug approved that predictably improved survival in Melanoma, the idea again is that if it can detect a substance as for now and our bodies can train our own immune system. It improved survival even in some cancers particularly some very difficult to treat, such as Melanoma or lung cancer. For other cancers and for other disease doctors are trying to understand how they can neutralize the immune system.
Immunotherapy can work in several ways: one is immunotherapy vaccines; immunotherapy vaccine utilizes certain proteins that are introduced your body to rave the immune system against a cancer cell. Doctors found that certain vaccines can develop proteins that are very specific for cancer cells and improves survival. Another type of immunotherapy is by utilizing classes of drugs that are checkpoint blockade inhibitors so, the idea is that cancer cells put up checkpoints or they put brakes on the immune system and these proteins are expressed on cancer cells and sometimes even in the tissue stroma such that one’s normal immune system can't get to the cancer cells.
What Types of Cancer Can Be Treated with Immunotherapy?
Bladder cancer
Breast cancer.
Cervical cancer.
Colorectal cancer.
Oesophageal cancer.
Head and neck cancer.
Kidney cancer.
Leukaemia.
Immunotherapy has been approved for the treatment of the following cancers. Not all patients with these cancers are eligible for immunotherapy. A variety of factors — the genetic makeup of the tumour cells, how far the cancer has advanced and whether it has responded to previous treatments
Immunotherapy holds a lot of promise as a cancer treatment. Still, it can cause some problems.
You might have a bad reaction.
There are side effects. Some types of immunotherapy rev up your immune system and make you feel like you have the flu, complete with fever, chills, and fatigue. Others could cause problems like swelling, weight gain from extra fluids, heart palpitations, a stuffy head, and diarrhoea. Most of the time, these ease up after your first treatment.
Cover Image Credits: https://www.uq.edu.au/news/filething/get/189272/MED-MS-3-small.gif
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