"Hundreds of clinical trials involving immunotherapy, alone or combined with other treatments, are underway for nearly every type of cancer. “People are asking, waiting, pleading to get into these trials,” said Dr. Arlene Siefker-Radtke, an oncologist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who specializes in bladder cancer.
The immune system — a network of cells, tissues and biochemicals that they secrete — defends the body against viruses, bacteria and other invaders. But cancer often finds ways to hide from the immune system or block its ability to fight. Immunotherapy tries to help the immune system recognize cancer as a threat, and attack it.
Doctors tried a primitive version of immunotherapy against cancer more than 100 years ago. It sometimes worked remarkably well, but often did not, and they did not understand why. Eventually, radiation and chemotherapy eclipsed it.
Researchers are now focused on two promising types of immunotherapy. One creates a new, individualized treatment for each patient by removing some of the person’s immune cells, altering them genetically to kill cancer and then infusing them back into the bloodstream. This treatment has produced long remissions in a few hundred children and adults with deadly forms of leukemia or lymphoma for whom standard treatments had failed.
The second approach, far more widely used and the one Mr. Cara tried, involves mass-produced drugs that do not have to be tailored to each patient. The drugs free immune cells to fight cancer by blocking a mechanism — called a checkpoint — that cancer uses to shut down the immune system.
Harnessing the Immune System to Fight Cancer - The New York Times
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