Immunotherapy: Use Your Own Body’s Defenses to Fight Cancer

Ronald Myers, Ph.D.
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Artistic rendering of the surface of a human dendritic cell

Traditional therapies to mitigate cancer cell progression from unchecked hyperproliferation, migration, invasion, and metastasis consist mostly of chemotherapy and radiation therapy.  These therapies are effective in some cases; however, they are not targeted approaches, and are known to cause a variety of severe side effects.  In recent years, researchers and physicians have been experimenting with a new class of cancer treatment known as immunotherapy.  This novel form of cancer treatment utilizes the patient’s immune system to keep cancer cells in check.  

There are various cancer treatment modalities which fall under the term immunotherapy.  One of the most commonly used immunotherapy techniques is known as an allogenic antigen vaccine.  In this type of treatment, an exogenous protein known to be an antigen specific to the patient’s form of cancer is injected into the patient.  The vaccine is described as allogenic because it isn’t produced using the patient’s own cells.  By using recombinant protein, a robust immune response against their cancer cells can be elicited, greatly reducing the growth and progression of the tumor in question.  This technique is described in the context of bladder carcinoma by Vang et al. in their 2013 JoVE publication entitled: Induction of Invasive Transitional Cell Bladder Carcinoma in Immune Intact Human MUC1 Transgenic Mice: A Model for Immunotherapy Development.

Artistic rendering of the surface of a human dendritic cell
Artistic rendering of the surface of a human dendritic cell

A more effective treatment method is to use an autologous vaccine derived from the patient’s own immune cells. This treatment is known as a dendritic cell vaccine.  Dendritic cells are a component of the mammalian immune system which presents antigens to T cells, which in turn, activates an immune response against a specific antigen.  To create a dendritic cell vaccine against a specific cancer type, blood is first removed from the patient to isolate immune cells.  After isolation, the dendritic cells are then exposed to an antigen specific to the subtype of cancer and injected back into the patient.  The dendritic cells will then present the cancer cell specific antigen to T cells, which will initiate an immune response against the tumor.  Sabato et al. describes this technique in their 2013 JoVE publication entitled: Preparation of Tumor Antigen-loaded Mature Dendritic Cells for Immunotherapy.