A short course in immunotherapy
How the immune system can be trained to attack cancer
the way it does other foreign invaders
Our immune system is constantly on guard for abnormal cells
that, left unchecked, can form into a benign or malignant cancer. This is
called immune surveillance, and is part of everyone’s innate immunity. It
helps prevent us from getting cancer. It’s increasingly evident, however,
that it can also play a critical role in treating many forms of cancer,
including multiple myeloma. Immunotherapy, a promising area of
precision medicine, is incredibly exciting, but also very complicated.
To understand why, it helps to know the basics.
The immune system has a remarkable ability to locate, recognize
and attack proteins and many foreign invaders including viruses
and bacteria that do our body harm. Unfortunately, specific to
cancer cells, they can be very good at evading and outwitting it. So
researchers are looking for ways to give it an upper hand.
The immune system’s “tag team”
There are two parts to our immune system that work hand-inhand: innate and adaptive.
The innate mechanisms are the “first responders” – cells that
travel around the body in search of trouble and react immediately,
shepherding the rest of the immune system to respond. Natural killer
cells (“NK cells”) are an example of such a cell, and are of keen interest
to researchers for their potential to recognize and kill cancer cells.
The adaptive mechanisms include highly specialized cells such as T-cells
and B-cells that eliminate or prevent the growth of specific disease-causing
pathogens. The adaptive immune system has the ability to clone its fighter
cells t