New immunotherapy against cancer

How immunotherapy fuels the defense against cancer

04/16/2015

Immunotherapy is celebrated by many experts as a breakthrough in the fight against cancer. While tumors repeatedly develop resistance to chemotherapy and targeted therapeutics, immunotherapy can bypass this problem and effectively combat the cancer. The news agency „APA“ talked with the oncologist Christoph Zielinski and the basic researcher Walter Berger about the treatment method.

Immunotherapy is very promising for some cancers
In immunotherapy, the body's own defenses and tumor growth to be brought into balance. „It has been understood that tumors are capable of suppressing the immunological defense against themselves“, explains Zielinski. Cancer cells have proteins on their surface that bind perfectly to the receptors of the defense cells. These receptors are said to inhibit an overreacting immune response, but this has a negative effect on cancers. So-called monoclonal antibodies such as ipilimumab, nivolumab and pembrolizumab, which have only recently been approved, prevent braking and also vigorously heat the body's defenses against the cancer. Immunotherapy is very successful in melanoma, forms of lung cancer, kidney cell and triple negative breast cancer. „I am convinced that this immunotherapy is one of the biggest breakthroughs in the treatment of cancer“, explained Berger. Although it could not cure cancer in general, but at least it is increasingly becoming a chronic disease.

In addition to the praise for immunotherapy, other experts, such as the Chairman of the Board of the German Cancer Research Center, Otmar D. Wiestler, emphasize at a press workshop at the beginning of the year that not all patients are equally responsive to the treatment method. Some cancer patients did not respond to the procedure. Why this is so, is not yet known. In addition, the question of whether this effect lasts on a long-term basis, even in the case of seemingly successful courses of treatment, said Wiestler. (Ag)

Picture: Andrea Damm