The Spread of Immunotherapies Within the Healthcare Community

By Vera Viner

For decades, the most common treatments against cancer have been chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. At times, cancer patients may be adequately treated with these procedures and may recover from the disease. Nonetheless, these common regimens often leave cancer survivors with debilitating side effects and many take months or even years to recover from the chemotherapy and radiation.

Luckily, immunotherapy is making headway in the medical sector and many patients are seeing the benefits of a different form of treatment based on the patients’ own immunity. MedCity News reported on one story where Coris Shepard, a lung cancer patient, found that his tumors actually grew after undergoing chemotherapy and radiation procedures.

At this point, Shepard agreed to participate in a clinical trial to test a new drug that would use his own body’s immune system to combat the cancer. After four months of this treatment, an MRI showed that some of his tumors had shrunk while others were completely gone!

“I was absolutely elated,” Shepard told MedCity News. “I’m more hopeful now because nothing else I had tried had actually worked.”

Mount Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center in Florida is one of the only places in the nation that administers this treatment. Right now, researchers are using this drug to study lung, kidney, and colon cancers as well as melanoma.

The researchers found that cancer cells use two proteins found on the cells and tissues of our immune system “to make themselves invisible.” The tumor cells are able to shield themselves from our body’s immune system in this way.

The pertinent results show that tumors have been shrinking from this new treatment. The medical oncologists working on this research, however, warn that the experiment is at its earliest stages of the clinical trial and future trials may not go as hoped.

“There are many steps involved in this process and we’re just beginning to discover them,” Dr. Jose Lutzky, oncologist at Mount Sinai, told the source. “While we are seeing significant tumor shrinkage, we’re trying to find the right dose. We also know that the blockage offered by the cancer cells is going to vary from tumor to tumor.”

Immunotherapy drugs are making headway in the cancer community and this form of treatment may be the next big thing to curing cancer and saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients. Provenge is the first cancer immunotherapy that was approved for use in 2010 to treat prostate cancer. Yervoy is another immunotherapy that was approved two years ago for treating metastatic melanoma.

With immunotherapy, no longer would the sick need to undergo intensive chemotherapy or radiation treatments that leave them with harsh side effects. The National Cancer Institute write on their website that chemotherapy side effects include anemia, bleeding, infection, memory changes, nausea/vomiting, nerve changes, pain, swelling, skin and nail changes, and more. Treatments that can keep patients from undergoing these difficult challenges would be the hope that the healthcare community has been searching for.