Advances in immunotherapy for Cancer Treatment

Abstract

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death around the world. Cancer cells display uncontrolled cell division and often times the ability to metastasize through the body. Cancer cells tend to possess genetic mutations that result in evasion of the cell cycle arrest system, inhibition of tumor suppressor genes, activation of oncogenes, and evasion of the body’s immune system. Although a range of cancer treatments have been developed, they often harm healthy cells and can damage the immune system of the patient. Based on the fact that the immune system does have mechanisms for recognizing and eliminating tumor cells , many modern anti-cancer therapies, collectively referred to as immunotherapy, involve manipulating the cancer patient’s own immune system to more effectively attack tumor cells. Some of these new immunotherapy-based strategies include the engineering of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, administration of tumor specific monoclonal antibodies to induce antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), administration of monoclonal antibodies that interfere with T cell checkpoints, and administration or in vivo expression of tumor specific neoantigens to activate tumor antigen-specific T cells. These techniques have their problems, but clinical trials have demonstrated promising results in many patients, and in general are significantly less hazardous to the patients undergoing treatment than traditional chemoand radiation-based therapies.