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How Scientists Are Treating Breast Cancer Using the Immune System

Immunotherapy treatments are especially effective against lung cancer, skin cancer and blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma. But immune-based treatments have not been as successful, or as plentiful, for the most common cancers: colon, prostate and especially breast. Of the more than 600,000 people who died of cancer in the U.S. in the past year, the vast majority had these types of solid tumors. The problem, says Dr. Robert Vonderheide, director of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, is that “most breast cancers fit into a category we call ‘cold’ immunological tumors, meaning the tumor has the ability to either exclude the immune system or hide from it altogether.…

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Resources

BreastCancer.org

Immunotherapy medicines harness the power of your body’s immune system to treat specific types of breast cancer.