New Immunotherapy Treatments and Targeted Treatments for Cancer

According to a report in IFLScience, Immunotherapy, which uses the body’s own defence mechanism, is at long last becoming accepted as a front-line treatment for cancer, taking its place alongside conventional chemotherapy and radiation-based treatments. 

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy treatment initially approved for advanced melanoma, recently became the first drug to be approved through the UK’s early access to medicine scheme, which gives patients with life threatening or serious conditions access to medicines that are unlicensed or off-label.

The readiness of melanoma skin cancers to become malignant and spread to other parts of the body makes them deadly if not caught early. Pembrolizumab is an antibody that acts on the immune system to allow it to recognise cancer cells, triggering an immune response rather than destroying cancer cells directly.

Source: pharmatutor.org

Meanwhile, a new generation of 'targeted' cancer treatments are also being developed. Rather than hammering all cell growth, both benign and cancerous, as standard chemotherapy and radiotherapy do, targeted treatments are much more focussed. Targeted cancer therapies are therefore expected to be more effective than older forms of treatments and less harmful to normal cells.

These targeted drugs target certain parts of cancer cells that make them different from other cells,or they target other cells that help cancer cells grow. Some targeted drugs are more “targeted” than others. Some might target only a single abnormal protein in cancer cells, while others can affect several different proteins in cancer cells. Others just boost the way the body fights the cancer cells.