Progress in human tumour immunology and cancer immunotherapy

In the last few decades immunotherapy has become an important part of treating some types of cancer. Newer types of immune treatments are now being studied, and they’ll impact how we treat cancer. In one method they can boost the body’s immune system in a very general way and in the other method they help train the immune system to attack cancer cells specifically. Because the immune system itself doesn’t see the cancer cells as foreign because the cells aren’t different enough from normal cells. Sometimes the immune system recognizes the cancer cells, but the response might not be strong enough to destroy the cancer.Among various types of cancer immunotherapy the main ones are: Monoclonal antibodies as the man-made versions of immune system proteins, immune checkpoint inhibitors as the drugs which basically take the ‘brakes’ off the immune system, and help it recognize and attack cancer cells, cancer vaccines which are substances put into the body to start an immune response against certain diseases, and other, non-specific immunotherapies which boost the immune system in a general way, but this can still help the immune system attack cancer cells.Recent immunotherapy research illustrates that even bulky invasive tumours can undergo complete regression. Under appropriate immune stimulation by IL-2 has shown that it is indeed possible to treat cancer successfully by immune manipulation. Also Adoptive Cell Therapy (ACT) using autologous tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes has emerged as the most effective treatment for patients with metastatic melanoma and can mediate objective cancer regression in approximately 50% of patients. The recent discoveries of tumour antigens, and of successful means for raising anti-tumour T-cell numbers in humans by immunization, have solved some of the problems confronting the successful application of immunotherapy to the treatment of human cancer. Current studies are aimed at optimizing immunization and understanding the mechanisms used by the tumour to escape destruction.

کلیدواژه ها:

Cancer ، immunotherapy ، immune system ، tumour