Immunotherapy Treatment
Immunotherapy is based on the body's natural defense system, which protects us against a variety of diseases. The immune system also works to aid our recovery from many illnesses.
Physicians, for many years believed that the immune system was effective only in combating infectious diseases caused by such invading agents as bacteria and viruses. More recently, we have learned that the immune system may play a central role in protecting the body against cancer and in combating cancer that has already developed. This latter role is not well understood, but there is evidence that in many cancer patients the immune system slows down the growth and spread of tumors. The body's ability to develop an immune reaction to tumors may help determine which patients are cured of cancer using conventional therapies, including surgery, radiation and drugs.
One immediate goal of research in cancer immunology is the development of methods to harness and enhance the body's natural tendency to defend itself against malignant tumors. Immunotherapy represents a new and powerful weapon in the arsenal of anticancer treatments.
Immunotherapy offers a great promise as a new dimension in cancer treatment, but it is still very much in its infancy. Immunotherapies which involve certain cytokines and antibodies have now become part of standard cancer treatment. Other examples of immunotherapy remain experimental. Although many clinical trials of new forms of immunotherapy are in progress, an enormous amount of research remains to be done before the findings can be widely applied.
Immunotherapy of cancer began about one hundred years ago when Doctor. William Coley, at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, showed that he could control the growth of come cancers and cure a few advanced cancers with injections of a mixed vaccine of streptococcal and staphylococcal bacteria known as Coley's toxin. The tuberculosis vaccine, Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), developed in 1922, is known to stimulate the immune system and is now used to treat bladder cancers.
Many years of research have finally produced the first successful examples of immunotherapies for cancer. Sometimes referred to as biological response modifiers or as biological therapies, these new treatments-such as interferons and other cytokines, monoclonal antibodies, and vaccine therapies-have generated renewed interest and research activity in immunology.
Portions of this text extracted from:
Supportive Cancer Care by E.H.
Rosenbaum, MD and I.R. Rosenbaum, Sourcebooks
