Cancer Immunotherapy

[D.ap]

Last Medical Review: 7/23/2015
Last Revised: 11/5/2015
2015 Copyright American Cancer Society


Cancer Immunotherapy
What is cancer immunotherapy?

Immunotherapy is treatment that uses certain parts of a person’s immune system to fight
diseases such as cancer. This can be done in a couple of 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
Some types of immunotherapy are also sometimes called biologic therapy or biotherapy.
In the last few decades immunotherapy has become an important part of treating some
types of cancer. Newer types of immune treatments are now being studied, and they’ll
impact how we treat cancer in the future.
Immunotherapy includes treatments that work in different ways. Some boost the body’s
immune system in a very general way. Others help train the immune system to attack
cancer cells specifically.
Immunotherapy works better for some types of cancer than for others. It’s used by itself
for some of these cancers, but for others it seems to work better when used with other
types of treatment.
What the immune system does
Your immune system is a collection of organs, special cells, and substances that help
protect you from infections and some other diseases. Immune cells and the substances
they make travel through your body to protect it from germs that cause infections. They
also help protect you from cancer in some ways.
The immune system keeps track of all of the substances normally found in the body. Any
new substance that the immune system doesn’t recognize raises an alarm, causing the
immune system to attack it. For example, germs contain substances such as certain
proteins that are not normally found in the human body. The immune system sees these
as “foreign” and attacks them. The immune response can destroy anything containing the
foreign substance, such as germs or cancer cells.
The immune system has a tougher time targeting cancer cells, though. This is because
cancer starts when cells become altered and start to grow out of control. The immune
system doesn’t always recognize cancer cells as foreign.
Clearly there are limits on the immune system’s ability to fight cancer on its own,
because many people with healthy immune systems still develop cancer. Sometimes the
immune system doesn’t see the cancer cells as foreign because the cells aren’t different
enough from normal cells. Sometimes the immune system recognizes the cancer cells, but
the response might not be strong enough to destroy the cancer. Cancer cells themselves
can also give off substances that keep the immune system in check.
To overcome this, researchers have found ways to help the immune system recognize
cancer cells and strengthen its response so that it will destroy them.
Types of cancer immunotherapy
The main types of immunotherapy now being used to treat cancer include:
· Monoclonal antibodies: These are man-made versions of immune system proteins.


http://m.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/docu ... 13-pdf.pdf