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Immunotherapy is also called biologic therapy or biotherapy.
It is treatment that uses certain parts of the immune system to fight
disease, including cancer. This can be done in a couple of ways:
- stimulating your own immune system to work harder or smarter
- giving you immune system components, such as man-made
immune system proteins
Immunotherapy is sometimes used by itself to treat cancer, but
it is most often used along with or after another type of treatment to
boost its effects.
For a long time doctors suspected that the immune system had
an effect on certain cancers. Even before the immune system was well
understood, William Coley, MD, a New York surgeon, first noted that
getting an infection after surgery seemed to help some cancer patients.
In the late 1800s, he began treating cancer patients by infecting them
with certain kinds of bacteria, which came to be known as Coley toxins.
Although he had some success, his technique was overshadowed when other
forms of cancer treatment, such as radiation therapy, came into use.
Doctors have learned a great deal about the immune system
since that time. This has led to research into how it can be used to
combat cancer, with many different approaches being explored. In the
last few decades immunotherapy has proven useful in treating several
types of cancer.
The idea of using one's own immune system to fight cancer is
tempting, but immunotherapy still has a fairly small role in treating
most cancers. So far, in most cases, it hasn't been shown to clearly be
better than other forms of treatment. For instance, it seems most
likely to be effective when treating smaller, early stage cancers, and
it may be less helpful for more advanced disease. Its main role at this
time is making other forms of treatment better or providing cancer
patients with another, often less toxic, treatment option.
But researchers have made important progress in this field in
recent years. Newer, more effective treatments are now being tested
that will have a greater impact on the outlook for people with cancer
in the future.
Revised: 03/18/2008
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