A Quick Look at the Main Types of Immunotherapy

The human body’s immune system is complex. When it is endangered and threatened by cancer trying to spread through the body, it needs as much help as possible. That’s where immunotherapy comes in.

Many doctors have found immunotherapy to be very effective for treating cancer. For instance, it has been shown to improve a lung cancer patient’s five-year survival rate, which is very promising long term. While there are about twenty types of immunotherapy treatments, this article will take a look at the main types of immunotherapies available for patients.

If you want to learn more, then keep reading.

What is Immunotherapy Treatment?

Immunotherapy is a type of biological cancer treatment that works with your immune system to battle cancer.

In summary, immunotherapy uses the body to help fight any cancer cells and develop ways to fight against them in the future.

Cytokine

For those who don’t know, a cytokine is a small protein whose role is to relay messages between different cells in the body. When cytokines are used as immunotherapy, they stimulate the cells present in the immune system to destroy cancer cells.

Cancer Vaccine

While no vaccine can immediately stop cancer in its tracks, there are cancer vaccines out there that have been developed as an immunotherapy treatment. A cancer vaccine can help teach the body to identify a threat and help it destroy the cancer cell. This is done by exposing your immune system to antigens, which are foreign proteins.

T-cell Transfer Therapy

A T-cell is a special type of white blood cell in the immune system that attacks infections. In transfer therapy, active immune cells are taken directly from cancer currently present, changed and grown to better fight cells, and inserted back into the body.

Just like CAR-T, it is one of the many types of cellular-immunotherapies that train T-cells to identify and exterminate any cancer cells.

Monoclonal Antibody

These antibodies are grown artificially in a laboratory to destroy certain areas of a cancer cell. Any type of antibody therapy can help the body target cancer cells or other cells/proteins that benefit tumor survival directly.

Oncolytic Viral Therapy

This therapy uses genetically modified viruses to attach themselves to a cancer cell. The virus can then make a copy of itself, just as it would when a regular virus tries to make the body sick. The (hopeful) result is that once it has gone inside the cell, it will explode like dynamite.

Don’t worry; these modified viruses do not attach themselves to your normal cells. Thus, you will not get sick from them.

Stay Knowledgeable About Different Types of Immunotherapy

For some cancer patients, radiation therapy and chemotherapy are not enough to fight their cancer, which is why they should consider immunotherapy.

If you or one of your loved ones has cancer or is at risk of contracting it, knowing about the types of immunotherapy that can help you will give you a hand in fighting cancer. Make sure to talk to a doctor so they can determine which immunotherapy or other cancer treatment is right for you.

If you want to read more medical health topics, check out the other articles on this website.


Carla Gayou
Carla Gayou

Carla is a high performing marketing professional with 5+ years of experience driving growth of in a variety of corporate and entrepreneurial environments. Strong command of digital operations with exposure to influencer marketing strategy, branding, analytics, SEO/SEM, customer success, content development, and social media Core expertise lies in managing end-to-end campaigns, creating memorable content, and facilitating improved conversion rates to enhance e-commerce operations. Adept in ensuring alignment with organizational goals, facilitating streamlined operations, and leveraging a data driven strategy used to make insightful marketing decisions.

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