Immunotherapy for cancer

What is the advantage of immunotherapy over classic oncological procedures?

It is commonly known that surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation also damage the healthy cells of the body. That can lead to serious side effects. The IOZK Immunotherapy, on the other hand, is targeted – only malignant tumor cells are attacked. Due to this, there are virtually no side effects.  Radiation and chemotherapy damage cells that divide quickly, however, they are not effective against “dormant” tumor stem cells. Thus, it can be presumed that the therapy is only effective during the course of treatment. As, for example, the hair starts growing again after the end of chemotherapy, so too can tumor cells start growing again. In contrast, the IOZK Immunotherapy can lead to the formation of an immunological memory, which leads to continuing protection as is known, for example, from vaccinations. It is also potentially active against tumor stem cells.

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Is immunotherapy effective against all types of cancers?

In principle, an immunotherapy is effective for the treatment of all malignant tumors: the immune system can reach tumor cells in all tissues and organs. However, the efficacy is not researched equally well for all types of cancer. Immunotherapies have thus far been primarily studied in cancers where no good, effective conventional form of treatment is available, such as malignant melanoma and glioblastoma.

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What are some of the main types of cancer immunotherapy?

There are several main types of immunotherapy used to treat cancer, and many are being studied. These include:  -Checkpoint inhibitors: These drugs basically take the ‘brakes’ off the immune system, which helps it recognize and attack cancer cells.  -Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy: This therapy takes some T-cells from a patient's blood, mixes them with a special virus that makes the T-cells learn how to attach to tumor cells, and then gives the cells back to the patient so they can find, attach to, and kill the cancer.  -Cytokines: This treatment uses cytokines (small proteins that carry messages between cells) to stimulate the immune cells to attack cancer.  -Immunomodulators: This group of drugs generally boosts parts of the immune system to treat certain types of cancer.  -Cancer vaccines: Vaccines are substances put into the body to start an immune response against certain diseases. We usually think of them as being given to healthy people to help prevent infections. But some vaccines can help prevent or treat cancer.  -Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs or MoAbs): These are man-made versions of immune system proteins. mAbs can be very useful in treating cancer because they can be designed to attack a very specific part of a cancer cell.  -Oncolytic viruses: This treatment uses viruses that have been modified in a lab to infect and kill certain tumor cells..

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When is immunotherapy used?

Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy are still the main treatments for many cancers but some people with particular types of cancer may benefit from checkpoint immunotherapy.To work out if checkpoint immunotherapy is suitable for you, your cancer specialist will consider the type and stage of cancer, your treatment history, your future treatment options and your overall health. Even if immunotherapy is recommended as a treatment, it is difficult to predict whether it will work. The rate of success varies depending on the type of cancer. So far, most people who have been treated with checkpoint immunotherapy have had advanced cancer. This means either the cancer has come back and spread after the initial treatment, or it was at an advanced stage when they were first diagnosed. For particular cancer types, such as melanoma, immunotherapy is starting to become available for earlier stage cancers.