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Immunotherapy Advancements

Cancer treatment is constantly advancing. The team at Comprehensive Cancer Centers works hard to stay at the forefront of new methods for saving patient’s lives through treatment. A rapidly evolving form of treatment for cancer, and other illnesses, comes in form of immunotherapy.

Anyone can develop a cancer cell, and the immune system will often recognize cancerous cells and eliminate them from the body. Unfortunately, cancers can also develop a camouflage making the cells difficult for immune systems to find. When this occurs, cancer cells can survive, grow and ultimately spread to other parts of the body. Immunotherapy comes into play as a treatment option by breaking down the cancer’s camouflage, which exposes the malignant cells and empowers the body to destroy them efficiently.

With a general understanding about how immunotherapy works, the discussion can move to how the treatments using the therapy have advanced, including groundbreaking new research efforts. To start, researchers are primarily focusing on the following major areas to improve immunotherapy technology and treatment options, including:

  • Finding solutions for resistance. Researchers are testing combinations of immune checkpoint inhibitors and other immunotherapies, targeted therapy, and radiation therapy to overcome resistance to immunotherapy.
  • Finding ways to predict responses to immunotherapy. Only a small portion of people who receive immunotherapy respond to the treatment. Finding ways to predict which people will best respond to treatment is a major area of research.
  • Learning more about how cancer cells evade or suppress immune responses against them. A better understanding of how cancer cells get around the immune system may lead to the development of new drugs that block those processes.
  • How to reduce the side effects of treatment with immunotherapy. For patients undergoing Immunotherapy treatment, researchers are looking for more ways to make the therapy more comfortable.

The team at Comprehensive is actively involved in these efforts, with the oncology practice’s heavy focus on clinical research, including active studies on new immunotherapies.

Outside of Comprehensive’s efforts, the practice monitors new research and exams papers published outlining new learnings about immunology. One study of note, and of interest to Comprehensive, was recently published in Nature Communications and highlighted boosting anti-cancer action by driving up immunity at the tumor site.

Driving up the immune response at the site of a cancer tumor may help enhance immunotherapy treatments in advanced stages of the disease. In these studies scientists boosted activation of T cells, important fighters in an immune response, inside tumors in a way that improved their interactions with an antibody therapy currently being tested in clinical trials.

The researcher team at The Ohio State University injected nanobodies carrying messenger RNA, molecules that translate genetic information into functional proteins, directly into the tumor site to help T cells generate specific receptors on their surfaces. Experimental monoclonal antibodies delivered six hours later could then bind to those receptors to carry out their cancer cell-killing functions. The technique left six of 10 mice with lymphoma tumor-free and was effective in melanoma when combined with additional existing drugs that help amplify the immune response.

While increasing T cell activation was the end goal of the research, designing the most effective nanoparticle to carry the messenger RNA was equally important. The lab conducting the research has long focused on nanoparticle delivery of messenger RNA as a therapeutic strategy, producing promising results in animal studies against sepsis, genetic disorders and even COVID-19.

The study provided evidence that this technology platform could be used to enhance immunotherapy and the team at Comprehensive is hopeful the team running this study will continue their important work in this field.

Comprehensive Cancer Centers Can Help

Physicians at Comprehensive Cancer Centers provide a variety of treatment options for cancer outside of immunotherapy including chemotherapy, radiation and breast surgery. To schedule an appointment with the team at Comprehensive, please call 702-952-3350.

 

The content is this post is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

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