Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy is a treatment that stimulates a person's own immune system to fight cancer. Immunotherapy can boost or change how the immune system works so it can find and attack cancer cells.

How and Why it is done?

Immune cells produce “cytokines”, protein molecules that act on other cells. Immunotherapy introduces large amounts of these proteins into the body. The goal of immunotherapy, sometimes called biological therapy, is to help your immune system fight cancer. Immunotherapy enables the body to make antibodies that mark the cancer cell for destruction, make cancer cells “visible” or vulnerable again, or insert a virus into the cancer cells.  It stimulates the immune system to produce more disease-fighting immune cells and makes it easier for the immune system to identify and target cancer cells.

Immunotherapies may be administered either into a vein (intravenously), by injection, under the skin (subcutaneously) or into a muscle (intramuscularly). Certain types of immunotherapies may be delivered directly to the body cavity where the tumour is located.