Cancer immunotherapy is a treatment that promotes the innate abilities of the body’s own immune system to fight against deadly cancer cells. Due to the unique properties of the body’s immune system, cancer immunotherapy may hold greater potential to fight cancer more effectively with fewer side effects and offers longer protection against the disease than any other cancer treatment approaches.
According to the Cancer Research Institute(CRI), for 60 years, they have been pioneering in advancing this new class of treatment. That is why, cancer immunotherapy today has become a promising treatment that made a meaningful difference to patients struggling the disease.
Cancer immunotherapy can be done in two different ways:
- Stimulating your own immune system to work harder or smarter to attack cancer cells
- Giving you immune system components, such as man-made immune system proteins
According to Cancer.Gov, the rapidly advancing field of cancer immunology has produced several new methods of treating cancer, called immunotherapies, that increase the strength of immune responses against tumors. These immunotherapies either stimulate the activities of specific components of the immune system or counteract signals produced by cancer cells that suppress immune responses.
Another immunotherapy approach is to block certain proteins named as, immune checkpoint proteins from halting the the strength and duration of the immune system’s response. Since tumors command these proteins and use them to suppress immune response, researchers claimed.
Image Credits: citninfo, imuc, medicaldaily
