Cancer Immunotherapy
We’re not naïve. We know there is a long way to go. This is the first step in an exciting journey - Charles Swanton
image by: Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy
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My Immunotherapy Journey
Last December I wrote an essay for the Los Angeles Times about what I wanted to do with my life after I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In July of 2015 — despite multiple surgeries, rounds of radiation, and chemotherapy — three doctors had given me and my husband their bleak perspectives on how much time I had left: “six to nine months,” “months to a year,” “a yearish.”
In the weeks that followed my public coming out about the grim news, a benevolent tidal wave of comments and emails washed over me from friends, co-workers and many thousands of strangers. Now when I run into friends on the streets of my town, they hug me and tell me I look great. But I can see it in their eyes;…
Resources
The Two Technologies Changing the Future of Cancer Treatment
The cancer immunotherapies most widely available now are checkpoint inhibitors such as Keytruda, which take the brakes off the body’s immune responses in order to more effectively unleash them on tumors.
Are We Innately Immune to Cancer?
At some level, yes, and new therapies could boost the body’s natural anti-cancer responses.
The cancer-fighting research that won the Nobel Prize in medicine, explained
James Allison and Tasuku Honjo advanced immunotherapy — and gave patients with cancer new hope.
The Most Promising Cancer Treatments In a Century Have Arrived—But Not For Everyone
But while the drugs are dramatically improving the odds of survival for some patients, much of the basic science is still poorly understood. And a growing number of researchers worry that the sprint to the clinic offers cancer patients more hype than hope.
As scientists train the immune system to fight cancer, others look to combat costs
Billions of research dollars, including from the Obama administration’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative, are being poured into finding new, molecular tools to enhance the immune system’s ability to fight cancer of all types. Now that these new therapies are starting to work, some researchers are turning their attention to something else: driving down costs.
Biomarkers provide a bridge to the next frontier in immuno-oncology
Harnessing the power of the immune system to destroy cancer has dominated the biotech industry over the past decade. And for good reason: CAR-T therapies, checkpoint inhibitors, oncolytic viruses, and other next-generation immunotherapies can be incredibly effective at treating cancer — in some patients.
How Close Are We to a Lifelong Cure for Cancer?
Carl June, a pioneer in the field of immunotherapy, explains the state of the art in cancer treatment and what’s coming next.
Immunotherapy, Jimmy Carter's new cancer treatment, explained
Memorial Sloan Kettering's Postow said for all the buzz about these drugs right now, there's a lot to be learned: "As excited as we are about this field, we know it doesn't help every patient, and we’re still trying to figure out who it helps, how it helps, and why." He continued: "It’s important for doctors and patients to realize this is not chemo."
Immunotherapy: a paradigm shift in cancer treatment
Cancer therapy is going through a true revolution. Thanks to different forms of immunotherapy, patients with cancers that were previously untreatable now show stunning survival rates. The efficiency and patient population treatable further increases when different immune-oncology strategies are combined. But tweaking immune cells into targeted action is a tricky occupation, and some immunotherapies have notorious side effects.
Not So Fast With Immune Therapy For Breast Cancer
For those with TNBC, estimates for median survival fall under 18 months. I wish the data for atezolizumab in TNBC were more convincing.
The FDA just approved a game-changing cancer treatment
The treatment is known in the medical community as CAR T-cell therapy. It involves removing some T-cells—a type of white blood cell—from a patient's blood. Then researchers tweak the outside of each cell in the lab by adding a receptor called CAR (chimeric antigen receptor). When the altered T-cells are infused back into the body, these receptors help them find and kill cancer cells.
The Promising New Cancer Treatment Behind Gilead’s $11 Billion Deal
Kite is one of the leading companies developing CAR-T, which stands for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell, therapy. Such treatments work by extracting a cancer patient’s T-cells, a type of immune cell, genetically modifying them outside the body to make them more effective at hunting down and killing tumors, and then re-injecting them into the patient.
The secret to curing cancer could lie in treatments that 'supercharge' immune systems
Cancer also has several strategies for evading detection by suppressing the immune system. Immunotherapies attempt to readdress this by pulling on a range of levers.
There's More Good News About Immune Therapies for Cancer
There has been welcome excitement in the cancer field lately about immune-based treatments, which co-opt the body’s own immune system to fight tumors. The so-called immunotherapies have transformed everything from solid cancers like melanoma and lung, to blood cancers like lymphoma and leukemia.
‘Masked’ cancer drug stealthily trains immune system to kill tumors while sparing healthy tissues, reducing treatment side effects
But what if drugs could be engineered to attack only tumor cells and spare the rest of the body? To that end, my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering have designed a method to keep one promising cancer drug from wreaking havoc by “masking” it until it reaches a tumor.
Meet the Carousing, Harmonica-Playing Texan Who Won a Nobel for his Cancer Breakthrough
Jim Allison is an iconoclastic scientist who toiled in obscurity for years. Then he helped crack a mystery that may save millions of lives: Why doesn’t the immune system attack cancer?
New trials show cancer immunotherapy can be incredibly effective—and incredibly dangerous
CAR T continues to show promise for otherwise incurable cancers.
The Most Promising Cancer Therapy in Decades Is About to Get Better
Tumors contain the seeds of their own destruction. We just need to work out how to activate them.
Cancer Immunotherapy Where Are We Going?
The compelling concept of utilizing the patient’s own immune system for a stronger and more effective way to attack cancer cells is not a new one. William Coley observed in 1891 that infections produced in patients with inoperable cancer following an injection of streptococcal organisms (Gram-positive bacteria) led to tumor shrinkage especially when the patients developed fever and other signs of a full-blown infection.
Cancer Immunotherapy: The Cutting Edge Gets Sharper
Scientists try to understand why some patients get better and others don't.
Cancer’s Next Big Thing — Immunotherapy
While some immunotherapies will be used in combination with chemotherapy, or immediately afterward, clinical success may point toward a day when they are used in lieu of chemotherapy altogether — and this will have big implications for the financial burdens associated with side-effects.
Harnessing the Immune System to Fight Cancer
New drugs and methods of altering a patient’s own immune cells are helping some cancer patients — but not all — even when standard treatments fail.
How the Promise of Immunotherapy Is Transforming Oncology
Cancer immunotherapy comes in several forms. The drugs sparking the most interest are called checkpoint inhibitors. They work by releasing the natural brakes on the immune system, enabling its foot soldiers, called T cells, to attack tumors.
Immune System, Unleashed by Cancer Therapies, Can Attack Organs
These so-called immunotherapy drugs have been hailed as a breakthrough in cancer treatment, attracting billions of research dollars and offering new hope to patients out of options. But as their use grows, doctors are finding that they pose serious risks that stem from the very thing that makes them effective.
Immunotherapy: A Game-Changer For Cancer Treatment?
Although it has long been ineffective in fighting cancer, recent discoveries have elevated it to possibly one of the strongest weapons against the disease, according to Dr. Glenn Dranoff, global head of immuno-oncology at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.
Immunotherapy: The New Promise for Cancer
The time for optimism in the field of cancer research is now — a time that Science magazine named “cancer immunology” as the breakthrough of the year. Today we have the hope that the cure for cancer is inside ourselves — in our immune system.
Lung Cancer’s New Nemesis - Immunotherapy
Patients have more treatment options than ever before. Previously, a patient with non-small cell lung cancer whose cancer progressed after being on treatment wasn’t left with very many options. But now, a portion of those patients qualify to go on an immunotherapy drug.
What Is Immunotherapy? The Basics on These Cancer Treatments
Though immunotherapy has been stunningly successful in some cases, it still works in only a minority of patients. Generally, 20 percent to 40 percent of patients are helped by checkpoint inhibitors — although the rate can be higher among those with melanoma.
A Revolutionary Cancer Therapy Made From Patients’ Cells
CAR-T cell therapy, one of the first “living drugs” for cancer, reprograms a patient’s immune cells to help fight the disease.
Immunotherapy drug a 'gamechanger' for head and neck cancer
Nivolumab found to extend lives of relapsed patients who had run out of therapy options.
New types of therapy mean cancer is going to become ever more survivable
Science is making cancer treatments more precise in many different ways.
T-Cell Therapy: Here’s How the Latest Cancer ‘Breakthrough’ Actually Works
By reprogramming the body's immune system to recognise cancers, researchers were able to cure 94 percent of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
The Nobel Prize is a reminder of the outrageous cost of curing cancer
Cancer’s most promising therapies come with $100,000-plus price tags.
My Immunotherapy Journey
Still, after decades of failed promises to “cure” cancer, it’s easy to understand why research oncologists are feeling optimistic right about now. They have real hope. It’s possible patients of the future will experience cancer as something more like a chronic disease, a frightening but manageable illness as opposed to the indiscriminate killer that now enters the lives of 14 million people worldwide every year.
Immunotherapy Foundation
Immunotherapy Foundation (IF) is a non-profit organization that strategically funds the most promising cancer immunotherapy research, focused on HPV-driven cancers.
Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy
Since its inception in 1976, Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy (CII) has reported significant advances in the field of tumor immunology. The journal serves as a forum for new concepts and advances in basic, translational, and clinical cancer immunology and immunotherapy.
American Cancer Society
In this section you'll learn how the different cells of the immune system work to protect you from disease; the different types of immunotherapy (cancer vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and nonspecific immunotherapies and adjuvants); and what immunotherapy is available for specific cancers.
Bavarian Nordic
Cancer immunotherapy offers improved treatment options with better quality of life.
Cancer Research Institute
Cancer immunotherapy–treatments that harness and enhance the innate powers of the immune system to fight cancer–represents the most promising new cancer treatment approach since the development of the first chemotherapies in the late 1940s.
Cancer Treatment Centers of America
Immunotherapy (sometimes called biological therapy, biotherapy, or biological response modifier therapy) uses your body's immune system, either directly or indirectly, to fight cancer or to lessen the side effects that may be caused by some cancer treatments.
CancerIndex
Links to articles about cancer immunology and immunotherapy
Issels Cancer Immunotherapy
The Issels® Immunotherapy for Cancer program stands out from that of other medical resources, for its remarkable results of long-term cancer remissions by integrating non-toxic immunotherapy as an essential part of an individualized treatment plan.
Mayo Clinic
The Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center studies the mechanisms involved in cancer development and how the immune system responds to cancer. The program also develops and tests immune therapies for cancer patients.
Norris Cotton Cancer Center
The mission of the Program is to create an interdisciplinary environment in which important scientific questions in cancer immunology can be addressed and the development of new immunotherapeutic strategies for the treatment of cancer is facilitated.
Takeda Oncology
Our mission remains constant — We endeavor to deliver novel medicines to patients with cancer worldwide through our commitment to science, breakthrough innovation and passion for improving the lives of patients.with multiple myeloma and relapsed mantle cell lymphoma.
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