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My Immunotherapy Journey

Last December I wrote an essay for the Los Angeles Times about what I wanted to do with my life after I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In July of 2015 — despite multiple surgeries, rounds of radiation, and chemotherapy — three doctors had given me and my husband their bleak perspectives on how much time I had left: “six to nine months,” “months to a year,” “a yearish.”

In the weeks that followed my public coming out about the grim news, a benevolent tidal wave of comments and emails washed over me from friends, co-workers and many thousands of strangers. Now when I run into friends on the streets of my town, they hug me and tell me I look great. But I can see it in their eyes;…

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Articles of Interest

The Two Technologies Changing the Future of Cancer Treatment

The cancer immunotherapies most widely available now are checkpoint inhibitors such as Keytruda, which take the brakes off the body’s immune responses in order to more effectively unleash them on tumors.

Are We Innately Immune to Cancer?

At some level, yes, and new therapies could boost the body’s natural anti-cancer responses.

Immunotherapy: a paradigm shift in cancer treatment

Cancer therapy is going through a true revolution. Thanks to different forms of immunotherapy, patients with cancers that were previously untreatable now show stunning survival rates. The efficiency and patient population treatable further increases when different immune-oncology strategies are combined. But tweaking immune cells into targeted action is a tricky occupation, and some immunotherapies have notorious side effects.

Meet the Carousing, Harmonica-Playing Texan Who Won a Nobel for his Cancer Breakthrough

Jim Allison is an iconoclastic scientist who toiled in obscurity for years. Then he helped crack a mystery that may save millions of lives: Why doesn’t the immune system attack cancer?

New trials show cancer immunotherapy can be incredibly effective—and incredibly dangerous

CAR T continues to show promise for otherwise incurable cancers.

The cancer-fighting research that won the Nobel Prize in medicine, explained

James Allison and Tasuku Honjo advanced immunotherapy — and gave patients with cancer new hope.

The Most Promising Cancer Therapy in Decades Is About to Get Better

Tumors contain the seeds of their own destruction. We just need to work out how to activate them.

The Most Promising Cancer Treatments In a Century Have Arrived—But Not For Everyone

But while the drugs are dramatically improving the odds of survival for some patients, much of the basic science is still poorly understood. And a growing number of researchers worry that the sprint to the clinic offers cancer patients more hype than hope.

Why immunotherapy could be the cure to cancer we have all been waiting for

Cancer research leader Carl June on how targeting immune cells could provide potentially lifelong protection.

A Revolutionary Cancer Therapy Made From Patients’ Cells

CAR-T cell therapy, one of the first “living drugs” for cancer, reprograms a patient’s immune cells to help fight the disease.

As scientists train the immune system to fight cancer, others look to combat costs

Billions of research dollars, including from the Obama administration’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative, are being poured into finding new, molecular tools to enhance the immune system’s ability to fight cancer of all types. Now that these new therapies are starting to work, some researchers are turning their attention to something else: driving down costs.

Biomarkers provide a bridge to the next frontier in immuno-oncology

Harnessing the power of the immune system to destroy cancer has dominated the biotech industry over the past decade. And for good reason: CAR-T therapies, checkpoint inhibitors, oncolytic viruses, and other next-generation immunotherapies can be incredibly effective at treating cancer — in some patients.

Cancer Immunotherapy Where Are We Going?

The compelling concept of utilizing the patient’s own immune system for a stronger and more effective way to attack cancer cells is not a new one. William Coley observed in 1891 that infections produced in patients with inoperable cancer following an injection of streptococcal organisms (Gram-positive bacteria) led to tumor shrinkage especially when the patients developed fever and other signs of a full-blown infection.

Cancer Immunotherapy: The Cutting Edge Gets Sharper

Scientists try to understand why some patients get better and others don't.

Cancer’s Next Big Thing — Immunotherapy

While some immunotherapies will be used in combination with chemotherapy, or immediately afterward, clinical success may point toward a day when they are used in lieu of chemotherapy altogether — and this will have big implications for the financial burdens associated with side-effects.

Could Immunotherapy Lead the Way to Fighting Cancer?

Cancer cells are able to do their damage partly because they co-opt these checkpoints—in effect, hacking the immune system by activating the brakes. This renders the T-cells impotent, allowing the cancer cells to grow unimpeded. Now scientists are figuring out how to put up firewalls that block the hackers. Checkpoint inhibitors deactivate the brakes and allow the T-cells to get moving again. This lets the body kill off the cancer cells on its own.

Harnessing the Immune System to Fight Cancer

New drugs and methods of altering a patient’s own immune cells are helping some cancer patients — but not all — even when standard treatments fail.

How Close Are We to a Lifelong Cure for Cancer?

Carl June, a pioneer in the field of immunotherapy, explains the state of the art in cancer treatment and what’s coming next.

How the Promise of Immunotherapy Is Transforming Oncology

Cancer immunotherapy comes in several forms. The drugs sparking the most interest are called checkpoint inhibitors. They work by releasing the natural brakes on the immune system, enabling its foot soldiers, called T cells, to attack tumors.

Immune System, Unleashed by Cancer Therapies, Can Attack Organs

These so-called immunotherapy drugs have been hailed as a breakthrough in cancer treatment, attracting billions of research dollars and offering new hope to patients out of options. But as their use grows, doctors are finding that they pose serious risks that stem from the very thing that makes them effective.

Immunotherapy drug a 'gamechanger' for head and neck cancer

Nivolumab found to extend lives of relapsed patients who had run out of therapy options.

Immunotherapy innovator Jim Allison’s Nobel purpose

How his immunology research revolutionized cancer treatment and earned him the Nobel Prize.

Immunotherapy, Jimmy Carter's new cancer treatment, explained

Memorial Sloan Kettering's Postow said for all the buzz about these drugs right now, there's a lot to be learned: "As excited as we are about this field, we know it doesn't help every patient, and we’re still trying to figure out who it helps, how it helps, and why." He continued: "It’s important for doctors and patients to realize this is not chemo."

Immunotherapy: A Game-Changer For Cancer Treatment?

Although it has long been ineffective in fighting cancer, recent discoveries have elevated it to possibly one of the strongest weapons against the disease, according to Dr. Glenn Dranoff, global head of immuno-oncology at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.

Immunotherapy: The New Promise for Cancer

The time for optimism in the field of cancer research is now — a time that Science magazine named “cancer immunology” as the breakthrough of the year. Today we have the hope that the cure for cancer is inside ourselves — in our immune system.

Lung Cancer’s New Nemesis - Immunotherapy

Patients have more treatment options than ever before. Previously, a patient with non-small cell lung cancer whose cancer progressed after being on treatment wasn’t left with very many options. But now, a portion of those patients qualify to go on an immunotherapy drug.

New types of therapy mean cancer is going to become ever more survivable

Science is making cancer treatments more precise in many different ways.

Not So Fast With Immune Therapy For Breast Cancer

For those with TNBC, estimates for median survival fall under 18 months. I wish the data for atezolizumab in TNBC were more convincing.

T-Cell Therapy: Here’s How the Latest Cancer ‘Breakthrough’ Actually Works

By reprogramming the body's immune system to recognise cancers, researchers were able to cure 94 percent of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.

The FDA just approved a game-changing cancer treatment

The treatment is known in the medical community as CAR T-cell therapy. It involves removing some T-cells—a type of white blood cell—from a patient's blood. Then researchers tweak the outside of each cell in the lab by adding a receptor called CAR (chimeric antigen receptor). When the altered T-cells are infused back into the body, these receptors help them find and kill cancer cells.

The Nobel Prize is a reminder of the outrageous cost of curing cancer

Cancer’s most promising therapies come with $100,000-plus price tags.

The Promising New Cancer Treatment Behind Gilead’s $11 Billion Deal

Kite is one of the leading companies developing CAR-T, which stands for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell, therapy. Such treatments work by extracting a cancer patient’s T-cells, a type of immune cell, genetically modifying them outside the body to make them more effective at hunting down and killing tumors, and then re-injecting them into the patient.

The secret to curing cancer could lie in treatments that 'supercharge' immune systems

Cancer also has several strategies for evading detection by suppressing the immune system. Immunotherapies attempt to readdress this by pulling on a range of levers.

There's More Good News About Immune Therapies for Cancer

There has been welcome excitement in the cancer field lately about immune-based treatments, which co-opt the body’s own immune system to fight tumors. The so-called immunotherapies have transformed everything from solid cancers like melanoma and lung, to blood cancers like lymphoma and leukemia.

Using Metaphors to Explain Immunotherapy to Cancer Patients

Metaphors are words or phrases used in a non-literal sense, and in oncology are often used as a communication tool. We previously described how metaphors were used in clinical oncology to describe molecular testing. We now report how metaphors are used to describe immunotherapy. Our hope is that the metaphors we describe here can be adapted by other oncologists to assist them in communication about immunotherapy.

What Is Immunotherapy? The Basics on These Cancer Treatments

Though immunotherapy has been stunningly successful in some cases, it still works in only a minority of patients. Generally, 20 percent to 40 percent of patients are helped by checkpoint inhibitors — although the rate can be higher among those with melanoma.

‘Masked’ cancer drug stealthily trains immune system to kill tumors while sparing healthy tissues, reducing treatment side effects

But what if drugs could be engineered to attack only tumor cells and spare the rest of the body? To that end, my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering have designed a method to keep one promising cancer drug from wreaking havoc by “masking” it until it reaches a tumor.

Resources

Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy

Our mission is to accelerate the development of breakthrough immune therapies to turn all cancers into curable diseases.

Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy

Since its inception in 1976, Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy (CII) has reported significant advances in the field of tumor immunology. The journal serves as a forum for new concepts and advances in basic, translational, and clinical cancer immunology and immunotherapy.

Cancer Research Institute

Cancer immunotherapy–treatments that harness and enhance the innate powers of the immune system to fight cancer–represents the most promising new cancer treatment approach since the development of the first chemotherapies in the late 1940s.

Issels

The Issels® Immunotherapy for Cancer program stands out from that of other medical resources, for its remarkable results of long-term cancer remissions by integrating non-toxic immunotherapy as an essential part of an individualized treatment plan.

Melanoma Institute Australia

Melanoma Institute Australia is dedicated to preventing and curing melanoma through innovative, world-class research, treatment and education programs. Our mission is to reach zero deaths from melanoma this decade.

CancerIndex

Links to articles about cancer immunology and immunotherapy