Immunotherapy is a form of cancer treatment that uses the immune system to attack cancer cells, in much the same way that it attacks bacteria or viruses. This type of therapy seeks to harness different types of immune cells circulating in your body and has the potential to provide lasting benefits. Simply put, immunotherapy treats your body, and your body treats the cancer.
Our immune system works to protect the body against infection, illness and disease. It can also protect us from the development of cancer. The therapy trains the immune system to recognize and target only the cancer causing cells without affecting the normal cells.
It makes the immune system remember the cancer cells (T lymphocytes – memory cell) and prevents them from attacking the body in the future. The immune system includes the lymph glands, spleen and white blood cells T lymphocytes. Normally, it can spot and destroy faulty cells in the body, stopping development of cancer.
Even in the last stage of cancer a cancer patient has better chances of getting recovered by Immunotherapy. With Immunotherapy there are minimum side effects to the cancer patients like hair loss, infections, pain, vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, and damage to the taste buds, weight loss, mouth-sores or loss of appetite. But it has its own side effects on endocrine organs. It is little expensive and many drugs are under trials.
In recent years, there have been major advances in the field of cancer immunotherapy.
Immunotherapy shows promising clinical results in patients with different types of cancers like lung, skin, blood cancers etc.
This treatment is currently being investigated for many cancer types such as:
- Urinary Bladder cancer.
- Brain cancer (brain tumor).
- Breast cancer.
- Cervical cancer and ovarian cancer.
- Colorectal (colon) cancer.
- Head and neck cancer.
- Kidney cancer, liver cancer and lung cancer.
- Prostate cancer.
- Skin cancer.
- Lymphoma
