Hyderabad: Immunotherapy for cancer wherein the body’s natural defences are boosted to fight cancer is being taken up as a line of treatment for head and neck cancers, lung cancers, melanoma and other cancers. Dr Vijay Anand Reddy, director at Apollo Cancer Hospital, explained, “Immunotherapy is designed to boost the body’s natural defences to fight cancer. It uses the substances either made by the body or in a laboratory to improve or restore immune system function.
The checkpoint inhibitors block normal proteins and try to overcome some of the cancer’s main defences against an immune system attack.” With the human papillomavirus-induced cancers increasing, tumours are found in the throat and oropharynx region which require intense treatment.
Immunotherapy drugs are found to have a better treatment response than chemotherapy and the survival rate is also better. The recent cases tackled in the state for brain tumours have shown that immunotherapy worked well for these patients. Therapeutic agents did not cross the blood/brain barriers but immune drugs like pembrolizumab were found to have an effect on these tumours and helped in better outcome in the patients.
