IMMUNOTHERAPY: SOLVING THE JIGSAW PUZZLE | Kosheeka
Of late, immunotherapy has emerged as a powerful technique in the treatment of cancer. Immunotherapy is a kind of cancer treatment that uses the capacity of your own immune system for the elimination and prevention of cancer. The growth of abnormal cells invades the body and leads to cancer. This technique has made commendable changes in cancer treatment, as it boosts and enhances the person’s immune response.
How does immunotherapy act against cancer?
The function of a normal immune system is to detect and destroy the proliferation of abnormal cells and prevent the development of various cancers. Even though your immune system has the ability to destroy abnormal cells, cancer has mastered in its own ways to skip the destruction from the immune system. For instance, scientists are proposing that there could be some epigenetic changes in the cancer cells, which can make it difficult for the immune system to detect. Also, certain receptors specific for cancer cells can turn off the immune response; as a mechanism to avoid immune destruction. Immunotherapy uplifts the immune response of the person and provides the immune system with supplementary components.
Recent trends in immunotherapy
There are several types of immunotherapy that are used to treat cancer and these include T-cell therapy, immune system modulators, monoclonal antibodies, immune checkpoint inhibitors. The ultimate purpose of all these immunotherapies is to boost the immune system to react strongly against cancer. Despite, all these forms of immunotherapies, a novel approach of combining immunotherapy with stem cell therapy has emerged. This fusion has the potential to completely revolutionize cancer treatment/therapy in the coming years. Pluripotent stem cells have the tendency to grow perpetually, which is quite similar to cancer cells. These similarities have proved to be a great source for researchers to study the changes and developments in the cells that lead to cancer. Pluripotent stem cells can produce infinite immune cells according to the patients.
Stem cells: The possible target
Various stem cells like neural stem cells and mesenchymal stem cells have inherent tumor-regression properties, which allows them to be a new target-delivery medium for anti-cancer agents. Stem cells can track micro-metastatic lesions and have the capacity to secrete anti-cancer agents.
The blend of stem cell technologies with an immunotherapy outlook has provided a novel method to rejuvenate the cancer-fighting immune cells; intensify the capacity of aging cells to divide in the body and intervene in tumor regression. Recently, various therapeutic modules have been developed by scientists, such as multitargeting antibodies, oncolytic viruses, fusion proteins, and certain types of stem cells. They are being transformed to accelerate the efficient delivery to tumors. Moreover, the undifferentiated stem cells have the potential to unfold the conundrums of cancer development and progression in people. This also has the potential to play a major role in future discoveries and the development of therapies to control and cure cancer. Undoubtedly, this amalgamation of immunotherapy and stem cell therapy has the tendency to revolutionize the regimes of cancer treatments.
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Originally published at https://kosheeka.com on September 22, 2021.
