Traditional lung cancer treatments include surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Ongoing research has resulted in even more cancer treatments, including immunotherapy. If you are curious about immunotherapy and whether it can work for you, this guide goes over some crucial basics.
The role of the immune system is to target germs in the body to prevent infections. With cancer cells, the immune system is less effective at launching attacks because cancer develops from formerly healthy cells. That means your immune system may interpret cancer cells as normal, unlike foreign invaders such as viruses and bacteria.
Immunotherapy involves treatments that utilize a person’s immune system to fight off cancerous cells. There are several forms of immunotherapy that can be used to treat cancer, including:
Immunotherapy typically works in one of two ways. Doctors may administer synthetic substances that replicate an immune system response or fortify a patient’s natural response to better combat cancer.
People with lung cancer benefit from certain types of immunotherapies, including checkpoint inhibitors, vaccines, and bispecific T-cell engager therapy (which is only used to treat small cell forms of lung cancer).
Only certain lung cancer patients are eligible for immunotherapy. Your doctor will assess the type of cancer, its stage, your current health status, the presence of genetic mutations, and previous treatments to determine whether this approach is right for you.
Like all cancer treatments, immunotherapy does come with a risk of side effects, including:
These side effects can range from mild to severe, so it is vital that you report them to your doctor. When side effects are serious, you may need to change treatments or alter the dosage.