Findings on Immunotherapy

Throughout the years, medical specialists have been carrying out profound research about the treatment of cancer and other related diseases. Thanks to this on-going research, many people suffering from immune-related diseases “are increasingly living for years, not months” according to a recent editorial in the journal JAMA.

Even though immunotherapy is preventing some diseases from developing, it is still not completely safe to use in all cases. In fact, immunotherapy has shown to be ineffective in certain cases, however, if it does work, patients have shown to have a higher survival rate. The latter highlights that unlike systemic chemotherapy, immunotherapy only targets our immune system. As a result, patients are more likely to live longer with less of an adverse effect on their body.

On-going research is being done not only to improve the treatments that are being administered but also to find new therapies that may help immunocompromised patients.

Currently, checkpoint inhibitors and CAR-T cells are the only two main forms of immunotherapy that are being administered within hospitalised settings. These drugs both help in reinforcing the immune system by stimulating T-cells, whose role is to destroy cancerous and virus-infected cells. 

On-going studies are constantly trying to discover different types of immunotherapy drugs that assist macrophages. Both T-cells and macrophages are therefore vital in the removal of malignant microbes and foreign substances out of the body. In cancer patients, macrophages have no function in fighting cancerous cells since the latter invade and shut down the function of macrophage cells.

Researchers at the New England Journal of Medicine have tested 22 patients with lymphoma (a type of cancer that affects lymphatic tissue) whose treatment has been resisted due to the cancer's intensity. Along with a standard drug, patients were given an additional experimental drug. Findings show that the cancer was reduced in half the patients and was completely disappeared in 8 of the 22 subjected individuals. In addition, side effects were minimal when linked to other forms of immunotherapy. However, given the reduced sample size further research experiments must be conducted in order to ensure that the sample reflects the general population. In doing so, errors related to sample size and bias are eliminated. 

Even though such experiments are in their initial stage, and continuous research must therefore be done in order to sustain these results, Dr Alexander M. Lesokhin states that “it could be pretty extraordinary” if these results would be reliable.

The field is still young, hundreds of clinical trials are underway and basic researchers are trying to find ways to fine-tune the treatments they have already developed, as well as find new ones.

Professors James Patrick Allison and Tasuku Honjo who discovered checkpoint inhibitors on T-cells will this year share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Both immunologists aim to identify new “ways to make immunotherapy work for more patients.”

Medical professionals are bringing together checkpoint inhibitors with each other or with regular chemotherapy and results show that “multiple treatments have considerably prolonged survival rates in patients with very aggressive cancers.”

Even though the CAR-T treatment has not shown to work on solid tumours, medical researchers are continuously testing this type of medication in other blood cancers. Scientists are working on increasing CAR-T usage and control by programming them to target a broader range of cells.

Immunotherapy has shown to be beneficial over certain systemic therapy that destroy our natural defence system and compromising patients to other comorbidities. In conclusion, immunotherapy creates a long-term solution by essentially guiding our body's natural defence system to attack malignant cells even after treatment is completed. 
  
View more on these findings on https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/health/cancer-immunotherapy-drugs.html