How Does Immunotherapy Help in the Fight Against Cancer?

How Does Immunotherapy Help in the Fight Against Cancer?

Immunotherapy is basically a cancer treatment that uses your own immune system to fight and destroy cancer cells. Because the cancer cells are different from normal cells, they do not die. This therapy uses substances that are made by the body to boost the immune system. It is used to treat many different types of cancer. The specialist uses this therapy alone or sometimes uses chemotherapy to treat cancer patients. In this blog, you will learn how immunotherapy helps fight cancer.

What are the Different Types of Immunotherapy?         

The immune system of a person consists of complex processes, i.e., cells, organs, and proteins. In this, cancer cells continue to grow. Immunotherapy helps the immune system to slow down the growth of cancer cells or stop cancer from spreading in other parts of the body. Doctors recommend immunotherapy to the patient according to the type of cancer, location, and size and also on which part of the body the cancer has spread. Treatment also depends upon various factors like age, general health, and body weight.

The Different Types of Immunotherapy:

• Non-specific immunotherapies

Non-specific immunotherapies help your immune system destroy cancer cells. There are different types of non-specific immunotherapies, i.e., cytokines, which are part of the immune system. Interferons are produced by the immune system to alert your body and slow the growth of cancer cells. Interleukins pass messages between cells.

• Monoclonal antibodies and immune checkpoint inhibitors

Monoclonal antibodies are generally made in a laboratory in order to boost the body’s natural antibodies to fight against cancer. This also blocks the activity of abnormal proteins in cancer cells. It is known as targeted therapy, in which the medication is used to target the cancer’s tissues, genes, or proteins that help the cancer grow.

• Oncolytic virus therapy

Oncolytic virus therapy is also known as virus therapy, and it uses viruses that have been changed in a laboratory in order to destroy cancer cells. When the modified version of the virus is injected into the cancer cells, then it makes a copy of itself and damages the cancer cells. After the cells die, they release proteins that boost your immune system and target any cancer cells in your body.

• Cancer vaccines

A cancer vaccine exposes your immune system to a protein known as an antigen that helps to fight body disease. This boosts the immune system to destroy the antigen. To prevent cancer, there are two types of vaccine, i.e., prevention vaccines and treatment vaccines.

• T-cell therapy

T cells are the cells that help fight against infection. In T-cell therapy, a specialist removes T cells from the patients’ blood and adds proteins known as receptors to the cells. These receptors help to recognize cancer cells. The modified T cells are inserted into the body and then destroy cancer cells. This is also called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.

Why do People with a Healthy Immune System Get Cancer?

People with a healthy immune system suffer from cancer because the immune system doesn’t recognize the cancer cells as these cells aren’t different from normal cells. Secondly, the immune system recognizes the cancer cells, but they are not strong enough to destroy the cancer. And cancer cells produce substances that keep the immune system from attacking them. Hence, researchers have found ways so that the immune system can recognize cancer cells and destroy them.

The Side-effects of Immunotherapy

The various side-effects of immunotherapy are fatigue, nausea or vomiting, mouth sores, diarrhea, high blood pressure, fever, pain or weakness, headaches, and itching.

Conclusion

Immunotherapy boosts your immune system and helps fight cancer. This therapy stops cancer cells from growing in the patient’s body. Immunotherapy alone can be helpful to treat cancer and in combination with chemotherapy.