Welcome to mid March 2023! Whew, some time has passed!
We wanted to start out the month with some basics about Immunotherapy. Our next field guidebook is about Immunotherapy and managing immunotherapy side effects. We have sharpened our pencils and are back at it, writing this book now. We will let you know as soon as it is available.
Many people diagnosed with cancer today will have immunotherapy as a part of their treatment. What is immunotherapy and how does it differ from chemotherapy?
Chemotherapy is a drug that kills cancer cells, as they rapidly divide to make new cancer cells. As cells divide they make new cells and that is a way that cancer grows. Many of the side effects associated with chemotherapy involve non-cancer cells in our body that also are rapidly making new cells: like hair cells, bone marrow cells, and cells in the lining of our GI tract.
Immunotherapy drugs help boost or change your own immune system to identify and kill cancer cells. This is something your immune system already knows how to do. Many cancers are prevented by our immune system and are destroying abnormal cells. However, cancer cells can figure out how to evade detection from our immune system and grow anyway. Our immune system has checkpoints that turn off the immune system so our immune system doesn’t get out of control and attack normal cells. That is where immunotherapy comes in. The most common type of immunotherapy are checkpoint inhibitors and these drugs prevent the checkpoints from slowing down the immune system and now this increases the body’s immune response to search and kill cancer cells.
What are the side effects from immunotherapy?
If the immune system is turned back on and the checkpoint is no longer stopping the immune response, the immune system can attack normal healthy cells, as well as cancer cells. Therefore, any normal cell in any part of the body can be attacked. But mostly the cells that can be affected are skin cells, colon cells, lung cells, liver cells, kidney cells, and endocrine organs. These systems are monitored closely while a person is undergoing immunotherapy.