Immunotherapy is a treatment that uses a person's own immune system to fight cancer. It can boost or change how the immune system works so it can find and attack cancer cells. There are several main types of immunotherapies here at the Lee Health Cancer Institute.
We commonly use checkpoint inhibitors and monoclonal antibodies. Immunotherapies can be used alone with other immunotherapies or in combination with chemotherapy.
Before you begin immunotherapy, its important you tell your doctor if you have an autoimmune disease. If you've had an organ or stem cell transplant, have breathing problems, have liver disease or are pregnant or plan to become pregnant, are breastfeeding, or plan to start breastfeeding.
Because of the impact of immunotherapy will have on your immune system, it is important for your care team to know about your health history and status. Your immune system is a collection of organs, spinal cells, and substances that help protect you from infections and some other diseases. The immune system can differentiate between normal cells in the body and those it sees as foreign such as germs and cancer cells. This allows the immune system to attack the foreign cells while leaving your normal cells alone.
The immune system uses checkpoint to proteins on immune cells. These checkpoints act like switches that need to be turned on or off to start an an immune response, but cancer sometimes finds ways to use these checkpoints to avoid being attacked by the immune system. Checkpoint inhibitors don't kills cancer cells directly. They work by helping the immune system to better find and attack the cancer cells wherever they are in the body.
