Releasing the immune system’s brakes to fight cancer
We are able to harness the power of the immune system to successfully prevent some nasty diseases through immunisation—but what about other diseases such as cancer?
In the past decade or so, we’ve been increasingly able to do just that. Immunotherapy is now considered the ‘fourth pillar’ of cancer treatments, standing alongside surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Immunotherapy refers to a range of different ways to use the body’s immune system to fight cancer by increasing its capacity to seek out and destroy cancerous cells.
One of the most widely-used types of immunotherapy currently available involves a class of medicines called ‘immune checkpoint inhibitors’ for which we can thank the 2018 winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, immunologists James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo.