The Future of Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy is an aspect of cancer treatment that has saved many lives and with that comes the rise of curiosity in this fascinating topic.
What is Immunotherapy Useful for Right Now?
The simplest way to explain immunotherapy is to break in two the words that make up the term: Immune and therapy. It’s simply a treatment given to the immune system to make its operations more efficient.
The two main types of immunotherapy are activation immunotherapy (which activates the immune system and makes it smarter) and suppression immunotherapy (which keeps the immune system from its hyperactivity that leads to destroying its own healthy cells).
The current uses of immunotherapy:
- Non-specific Immunotherapy to Trigger Treatment
Currently, interleukins and interferons are non-specific immunotherapies that have been successful. Interleukins essentially trigger cancer-destroying cells while interferons help to slow down the growth of the cancerous cells.
- Monoclonal Antibodies– An example of this is durvalumab. Antibodies are imitated in the lab and used to inhibit any abnormal protein that is encouraging cancer growth.
- Cancer Vaccination– Amongst other important applications of immunotherapy, cancer vaccines are also well known. Less virulent strains of cancer can be injected into a person to train the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells.
Current Milestones and Limitations of Immunotherapy
Milestones
- Successful Bone Marrow Transplants– Treatment of blood-borne cancers with bone marrow transplants has become more and more successful. Healthy stem cells are infused into the body in an attempt to replace diseases of bone marrow. The new stem cells can also kill cancer cells. This method has worked for immune deficiencies, acute and chronic leukemia, plasma cell disorder, etc.
- Monoclonal Antibody Therapeutics– Monoclonal antibodies (mAb) can be bound to certain cells to stimulate the activity of the immune system. The mAb is often attached to chemotherapeutic drugs and together, they target cancer cells and preserve healthy cells. Other milestones are improvement in immunomodulatory approaches and development in immune cell manipulation. Several others abound.
Limitations
- Immunotherapy is time-consuming and costly – Despite its limitations, immunotherapy is still very costly and unaffordable to the average man. It also takes time to work and by the time it kicks in, people may still not get the desired results.
- Cancer cells still have their mysteries– As masters of disguise, cancer cells can trick the immune system into seeing them as healthy cells. This is infuriating, but not just that, it’s slowing the progress of immunotherapy research.
- Immunotherapy is largely unpredictable– What side effects will occur during immunotherapy? The general answers are given but the truth is not even the experts know just what to expect. Immunotherapy is still very unpredictable.
- Immune system complexity makes things difficult – Autoimmune diseases can develop through immunotherapy. This will complicate the whole treatment effort. The complexity of the immune system isn’t yet fully understood and this makes some therapies cause more harm than good.
The Future to Look Forward to
What are the experts saying about immunotherapy’s future? Well, let’s get to it. There are many areas of immunotherapy that we can expect tremendous improvement as the times go by. These areas are discussed below.
- Re-engineering T-cells into CAR T-cells
This type of immunotherapy is specifically focused on the treatment of childhood cancer. It uses the method of modification of the T-cells collected from a person’s body. These T-cells are then re-engineered in the laboratory.
New receptors called CARS (chimeric antigen receptors) are placed on the surface of the T-cells to give them the special ability to recognize and destroy cancer cells. They will also be multiplied to give the body a higher chance of success against cancer.
The cells will be placed back into the body to carry on the function. If this method continues to work successfully against cancer, it’ll be a major success.
- Gene Therapy in Solid Tumors
Solid tumors such as sarcomas and lymphomas may be benign or malignant, but whichever it is, it requires treatment that will work excellently well. A solid tumor does not contain cysts or liquid and a promising treatment for them is oncolytic virus.
- Checkpoint Blockades
Because of the highly deceiving nature of cancerous cells, checkpoint blockades have been invented to help the body to keep its game up as far as cancer defenses go. Melanoma, kidney cancer, and many other types of cancer are responding to different checkpoint blockades.
They work best in combination with other treatments and currently are being improved to perform better on other types of advanced tumors.
- Cancer Vaccines
Cancer-specific antigens can be targeted. Immunotherapy-related vaccines have been pushed at for years. Currently, they are still being worked on to discover how some infectious diseases can be prevented through inactivated forms of pathogens that can successfully stimulate an immune response.
In Conclusion
Will immunotherapy continue to help people, yes. Will the results improve? You bet. There’s relentless work going on to find how to best teach the immune system to become better at what it does.
Immunotherapy is a work in progress, but very promising. Although there are many limitations currently, the years ahead hold the possibility of groundbreaking discoveries.
