Breast Cancer Immunotherapy
The information found on this website is not to be intended as medical advice it is presented only for educational purposes. Please consult your physician for medical advice.
Why Immunotherapy?
At present, there are two common ways of dealing with breast cancer –
chemotherapy and radiation treatment. We can compare these to the potential
of immunotherapy.
Let’s explore these and determine their pros and cons.
Chemotherapy
More commonly known as “chemo”, chemotherapy is one of the most
commonly used treatments for cancer. In this procedure, drugs are usually
takes orally or they may be injected into the blood stream so that they can
spread throughout the body, killing cancer cells it passes. Chemo is recommended
by doctors for patients whose cancers have spread.
Chemo has been proven to kill cancer cells, but the sad thing is that they
can also damage normal cells. This leads to several side effects, depending
on the type of drug used, the amount taken and the length of treatment. Some
of the most common side effects include the following:
· Hair loss
· Mouth sores
· Loss of appetite
· Nausea and vomiting
· Higher risk to infection
· Easy bruising and constant bleeding
· Tiredness
These side effects are short term and they go away once the treatment is over.
Chemo does not work for all kinds of cancers, but it can help relieve symptoms
for patients in the advanced stages of cancer and can help them live longer.
Radiation therapy
At present, there are two kinds of radiation therapy being used, depending
on the kind of cancer that needs to be treated – external beam radiation
therapy and internal radiation therapy. External beam radiation therapy is
radiation from the outside of your body aimed only at specific parts such
as your chest (for lung cancer) and specific parts of your skin. In internal
radiation therapy, seeds, ribbons or capsules are placed near the cancer cells.
This way, treatment of high doses of radiation is possible without affecting
other parts of your body. Internal radiation can also be in liquid form and
like chemo, it is recommended for those whose cancer cells have spread out
in the body.
Radiation therapy is not usually used to treat the original tumor, but it
is used to treat patients whose cancers have come back, especially if the
tumor cannot be removed through surgery. Used this way, radiation therapy
isn’t really a cure for cancer, but it is used to control the symptoms.
Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy works by boosting the body’s inherent body defense system
in fighting cancer cells. Doctors draw out t-cells from the body, cultivate
them in a laboratory. Once the number of cells increases, these are then injected
back to the patient’s body to help stimulate the production of specific
antigens and help reduce the size of tumors.
Past researches on immunotherapy involved treatment only for melanoma, but
the results have been very promising. Mark Origer was one of very first cancer
patients to ever use immunotherapy, and the success of the procedure in his
case has led to further researches about immunotherapy. From an advanced melanoma
cancer patient, Mark Origer is now fully recovered after two years of being
injected with his own cells.
Today, immunotherapy is used to treat different kinds of cancers such as that
of the breast and prostate. In order to do this, doctors hand pick white blood
cells which are known to fight these specific kinds of cancer.
Of all the popular cancer treatments, immunotherapy is the least invasive.
Unlike chemo, it does not damage the normal cells. Unlike radiation, it doesn’t
only treat the symptoms, but it helps effectively fights cancer cells causing
the reduction in the size of tumors. For women with breast cancer, this is
an important detail. Now, they can save their breasts from surgery, and use
their own defense system to fight against their diseases.