IMMUNOTHERAPY:HOW OUR IMMUNE SYSTEM FIGHTS CANCER

An average human being comes in contact with over a million germs a day. our body would have been vulnerable to these disease causing germs if not for the action of our immune system.

The immune system is responsible for protecting the body against various disease and pathogens. It consists of cells which help our body to fight against the germs we encounter on our everyday lives.

THE IMMUNE SYSTEM AND CANCER

The immunes systems ability to fight against unknown cells may be able to prevent and treat many cancer related diseases. Most times the cancer cells are able to escape the grip of the immune system and possible destruction by it by

*reducing the number of tumor cells on their surface thereby making it very difficult for the immune system to notice them

*utilizing proteins that stops the effect of the immune on their surface thereby halting the effect of the immune system on them

*making other cells around it to produce substances that encourages their growth.

In recent years, many researches and advancements have been made toward getting the immune system to bypass the effect of cancerous cells on them and try to destroy the cells. These methods aimed at improving the immune system to fight against cancer are called immunotharapies

Immunotherapies are aimed at enhancing some components of the immune system to fight against the disease and to bypass most of its effect on it in other for it to perform its duty effectively .

Immunotherapies have been going through recent researches and moderations which are being used effectively to treat cancer patients. Here are some of the existing approaches to immunotherapy that are being put into practice today.

1: STOPPING THE ACTIVITY OF IMMUNE MODERATORS.

Researches have shown that cancer cells have the ability to utilize immune regulators to their advantage. Immune regulators or moderators are proteins that limit the action of the immune system. They help slowdown immune response sometimes to stop it from destroying normal and good cells along with the damaged ones. One of the approaches to immunotherapies today is to try to stop the actions of these proteins in cancer patients since the cancer cells are now utilizing them to their advantage to stop the immune system from destroying them. If the actions of the protein moderators are stopped, the immune system would be able to fight and destroy the cancer cells effectively. Several drugs have been produced and approved which can inhibit these proteins making the cancer cells vulnerable to the immune response. Some of these drugs include

*ipilimumab (Yervoy®), which is being used for treatment of melanoma. It inhibits a moderator proteins called CTLA4 and stops it from releasing its inhibitory signal to the immune system which slows down its response.

*nivolumab (Opdivo®) and pembrolizumab (Keytruda®) . These drugs functions the same way as ipilimumab (Yervoy®) with the only difference being that they inhibit a different moderator protein known as PD 1. They have been approve to treat people with lung cancer and advanced melanoma.

Other drugs are also being manufactured to inhibit these moderator proteins in cancer patients and further researches are being carried out to know why the drugs work on some patients and not on some. I Believe in the nearest future their would be futher developments which will help utilize this system to fight against cancer cells.

#2 UTILIZING ADOPTIVE CELL TRANSFERS (ACT)

In recent times ,some patients with advanced forms of cancer such as melanoma and blood cancers have been treated completely with the adoptive cell transfer method which involves the use of immune cells collected from the patients blood to fight against the cancer cells. The method or ways which the adoptive cell transfer method is being used include

*TIL THERAPY

the first ART method tested in humans were the TIL therapy. In this method ,tumor- infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) which have already made their way into the tumor(these T-cells are the ones that have better chances at destroying the tumor) are extracted and grown in the laboratory to several millions. The body is raided of any other T-cell in the body through chemotography and then the grown cells are then injected into the patient which then fights the growing tumors.

*CAR T-CELL THERAPY.

This is the most widely used form of the adoptive cell transfer method. In this method, the main cells responsible for killing germs are extracted from the patient and taken to the laboratory to be modified to have the chimeric antigen receptor(CAR) which is a synthetic protein that sticks to the cancer cells and destroys them. The cells modified with the CAR are later reproduced in the laboratory to their millions . Before it is infused into a patient, the patient would be drained of all the T-cells in his body and then infused with the modified T-cell with the synthetic CAR which fight against the cancer cells. The first CAR T-CELL THERAPY was approved in 2017 for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

*TCR THERAPY

Another form of the ACT method is the T-CELL RECEPTOR (TCR) therapy. It is produced and administered the same way as the CAR but only that the TCR is naturally occurring and are transported to the cancerous cells where they bind to destroy the cells.

3 VACCINES.

Cancer treatment vaccines are made from Certain substances or cells which are gotten from patients tumors. They are produced to help strengthen a patents defence against the disease by stimulating his immune system to fight against the diseases. sipuleucel-T (Provenge®) the first cancer treatment vaccine was used on some patients with prostate cancer and since then more vaccines are being produced for treatment of other forms of cancer.

4 THERAPEUTIC ANTIBODIES

Therapeutic antibodies are synthetic antigens produced in labs for the sole purpose of killing cancerous cells. The most encouraging breakthrough of the therapeutic antibodies are the antibody drug conjugates(ADCs). They are manufactured chemically by bringing together various antigens and poisons that can kill cancerous cells and mixing them chemically . They have been approve to treat various forms of cancer such as breast cancer,T-cell lymphoma,etc. some of the therapeutic antigens are capable of making the cancer cells to kill their self (apoptosis). some therapeutic drugs include rituximab (Rituxan®),denileukin diftitox (ONTAK®) etc.

5 THE USE OF MODULATORS

Another form of immunotherapy that have proven to be very promising and useful is the use of modulator proteins such as cytokinins which help to stimulate the immune system to fight against cancer cells.They activate certain lymphocytes which are responsible for destroying the cancer cells. More researches are being made to know how this modulator proteins affect the immune system and how they can be used effectively.

Conclusion

Immunotherapy is a very reliable way to fight cancer and i strongly believe that if more funds are put into researches to help improve the system, we'll be having a reduction in the rate of cancer deaths occurring in our world today.

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