Immunotherapy is a new treatment that is widely considered to be a breakthrough in cancer care. The way it fights cancer cells in the body is different from other treatments such as chemotherapy. Here’s why:
Immunotherapy is not Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy has been, for a long time, the world’s best weapon for fighting cancer.
Cancer is characterized by cells that divide way too fast, and chemotherapy works by killing the cells while they are dividing to form new cells.1
It may sound scary to put inside our body a chemical that kills cells while they are dividing, but remember that as our body matures, our rate of cell division slows down. This is why very old people heal much more slowly than babies.
So in a typical adult, most cells are in fact no longer dividing as fast as we may imagine.
Therefore, the tissues formed by these cells are largely unaffected by chemotherapy.
The cells that do divide very quickly even in adults are the cancer cells. And so, these are the ones most affected by chemotherapy.
But there is a problem: While most of our healthy cells do not divide very quickly, “most” is not the same as “all.” We do have healthy cells that also divide very quickly. Examples are hair cells, skin cells, the lining of the stomach and intestines, and bone marrow, which produces white blood cells.2
Therefore, our hair, skin, stomach, intestines, and bone marrow are also at high risk of injury from chemotherapy.2
This is why most people who receive chemotherapy lose their hair, get dry skin, feel sick in their stomachs, and experience white blood cell-related side effects such as weaker immunity.
However, these side effects are generally manageable and temporary.
Innovation of Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy fights cancer by taking advantage of a much more targeted, and efficient mechanism that the body already has for killing cells that harm the body. This mechanism is called the immune system.
When the immune system finds a harmful cell inside the body, it gets activated and:
- Marks that cell
- Kills it
- Remembers it
This, basically, is how the immune system fights infectious bacteria and viruses, and yes, cancer cells as well.
And yet we still get cancer. Why?
Deactivated T-Cells
Some cancer cells actually do get killed by the immune system, so we never find out about them.
But some cancer cells are able to escape the immune mechanism, and these are the cancers that eventually cause problems for us.
One of the ways cancer cells escape the immune system is by deactivating T cells, which are one of the immune system’s main tools for fighting cancer.
Some cancers take advantage of this mechanism by forming proteins – called “programmed death ligand 1”, or PDL-1 that turn the T cell off. Then the cancer cell can no longer be harmed by the T cell. The cancer is now free to thrive.
Action of Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy works by disabling the cancer cell’s PDL-1 Testing from turning the T cell off. When the cancer is unable to turn the T cell off, the T cell is able to kill the cancer cell. Most often the T cells do not harm healthy skin cells, hair follicles, bone marrow, and gastrointestinal cells.
In other words, the cancer is killed with fewer adverse effects, compared to chemotherapy. But that’s not all. Now we come to the true wonder of immunotherapy: the T cell does not just kill the cancer cell, it also remembers it. This remembering forms the biggest difference between chemotherapy and immunotherapy.
With chemotherapy, once you stop receiving the drug, you also stop receiving its benefits. The cancer can come back.4
This is why when a patient is said to be “in remission” this means that the cancer is gone at the moment. However even in the era of the chemotherapy, being in remission still does not mean that the patient is completely cured. The cancer can go back but neither the doctor nor the patient can determine if this would happen or not.4
But with immunotherapy, the treatment period seems to act like a training period for the immune system. And so, there are cases when, even as the drug is no longer present in the body, the well-trained T cells continue to do their job.
Thus the cancer has a harder time coming back. And for the first time in a long time, thanks to immunotherapy, the field of medicine can once again hope that a cure for cancer may have been found.
Immunotherapy Philippines
Immunotherapy is approved by the Philippine Food and Drug Administration as a treatment option for non–small-cell lung cancer, melanoma, head and neck squamous cell cancer, classical Hodgkin lymphoma, bladder cancer, and gastric cancer.
Immunotherapy cost in the Philippines
Given the benefits of immunotherapy, for you to know about the cost of immunotherapy in the Philippines, you need to ask your family doctor or find one. So for you to answer the question of “how much is immunotherapy in the Philippines?” You must consult your doctor or Find a Doctor.
References:
1. “How is Chemotherapy used to treat cancer?” American Cancer Society.
Accessed November 8, 2018.
2. “Chemotherapy Side Effects.” American Cancer Society.
Accessed November 8, 2018.
3. “Checkpoint Inhibitors. Cancer Research UK. www.cancerresearchuk.org/aboutcancer/cancer-in-general/treatment/immunotherapy/types/checkpoint-inhibitor
“What is Cancer Immunotherapy?” American Cancer Society.
“NCI dictionary of cancer terms.”
National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health.
www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms November 8, 2018.
4. McCluskey, Katherine. “Immunotherapy vs chemotherapy: what’s the difference?”
Cancer Research Institute website. www.cancerresearch.org/blog/june-2016/differencecancer-immunotherapy-and-chemotherapy; “Why some cancers come back.”
Cancer
Research UK. www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/what-is-cancer/why-somecancers-come-back.
November 8, 2018.
5. Republic of the Philippines Food and Drug Administration.
https://ww2.fda.gov.ph/index.php/consumers-corner/registered-drugs-2/378065-BR-
1138. Accessed May 3, 2019.
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