While many people are familiar with chemotherapy and radiation as treatments for cancer, immunotherapy is garnering a lot of headlines as a powerful new weapon in treating certain types of cancer.
In less than two years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved immunotherapy treatments for lung cancer, bladder cancer and Hodgkins lymphoma, among other conditions.
Immunotherapy, which is sometimes called biologic therapy or biotherapy, can work by either training the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells more effectively or by boosting the body’s immune system in a more general way by providing components, such as man-made immune system proteins, to strengthen it.
“The advantage of these newer, targeted immunotherapies lies in their ability to spare normal cells from the damage typically caused by traditional chemotherapeutics,” explains Dr. Douglas Flora, a medical oncologist with St. Elizabeth Cancer Center.
Although the idea of teaching the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells isn’t new, until recently, many of the advances in immunotherapy have come gradually. That’s because the immune system is programmed to recognize and fight foreign substances in the body, such as germs. Because cancer cells are part of the body that have mutated and grown out of control, the immune system has a hard time recognizing them as foreign.
For researchers working to advance immunotherapy, the challenge lies in directing the immune system to recognize and fight cancer cells, while not attacking the rest of the body.
“Once turned on, the immune system can sometimes be too activated, attacking normal organs like the thyroid gland, kidneys, colon or lungs,” says Dr. Flora. “We need to watch our patients closely on these drugs, and we must be prepared to act quickly if it seems a patient’s immune system is starting to attack good cells too much.”
But researchers are learning more about immunotherapy every day, he says.
“These are still the early days, with advances coming faster than our ability to study them in controlled clinical trials. Many of these drugs are getting expedited approval through the FDA to address unmet needs. As we gain confidence in our ability to govern these immune responses, we see new hope in our fight against cancer. With each new target identified, or each new drug approved, we get another step closer to eradicating these diseases. This strategy, when we recognize its full potential, may save someone’s husband, mother, or child. What could be more important?”
