New Brunswick, N.J., June 13, 2024 – Immunotherapy, a type of cancer treatment that uses a person’s own immune system to attack cancer cells, is continuing to transform cancer treatment and care. Christian S. Hinrichs, MD, chief of the Section of Cancer Immunotherapy and co-director of the Duncan and Nancy MacMillan Cancer Immunology and Metabolism Center of Excellence at Rutgers Cancer Institute and RWJBarnabas Health, shares the basics of immunotherapy, who can benefit from it and what the future holds for this groundbreaking treatment.
How it works: In a healthy body, the immune system fights off infection and other diseases because it is able to differentiate healthy cells from harmful substances and abnormal cells. However, cancer cells are often invisible to the immune system, which means that the body cannot detect the disease in order to fight it. Immunotherapy works by helping the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells.
There are several types of immunotherapies. They are different , but their aim is the same: to improve the immune system’s ability to fight cancer.
- CAR T-Cell therapy involves taking T cells from the patient’s blood and genetically modifying them in a laboratory to express chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) on their surface. These CARs enable the T cells to specifically recognize and attack cancer cells. The modified T cells are then infused back into the patient, where they multiply and target the cancer cells.
- Monoclonal antibodies are immune system proteins created in a laboratory to bind to specific targets on cancer cells. Targeting the cancer cell allows the immune system to “see” the cancer as harmful to the body and attack the abnormal cells.
- Treatment vaccines are designed to stimulate the body’s immune system to produce antibodies against specific antigens on a cancer cell. Treatment vaccines do not prevent cancer like other vaccines prevent disease; they are given to individuals who have cancer to help their immune system have a better response.
- Immune system modulators stimulate or suppress the immune system to help the body fight cancer. Some immune system modulators (such as monoclonal antibodies and cancer vaccines) affect specific parts of the immune system, however nonspecific modulators that affect the immune system in a general way can also be used to attack cancer cells.
Instead of directly killing cancer cells like chemotherapy or radiation therapy, immunotherapy powers up the immune system to fight the disease. For decades, the cornerstones of cancer treatment were surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Traditional treatments like chemotherapy often have debilitating side effects. The precision of immunotherapy minimizes collateral damage to healthy tissues, reducing the side effects often associated with traditional chemotherapy.
We’re setting the standard at Rutgers Cancer Institute and RWJBarnabas Health. Immunotherapy has shown remarkable success in treating advanced cases of cancers like blood cancers, lung cancer, melanoma, advanced bladder cancers and more. Researchers at Rutgers Cancer Institute are working to identify how immunotherapy may work in treating more common types of cancer. We are finding out what makes cancer grow, and how to manipulate its own processes to stop cancer from growing and spreading. There are many immunotherapy treatments available as well as several immunotherapy clinical trials at Rutgers Cancer Institute.
Dr. Hinrichs, who is also co-leader of the Cancer Metabolism and Immunology Program, is known for discovery and development of new cellular therapies for common types of cancer. With a particular focus on cancers caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), he has discovered personalized cellular and gene therapies for these cancers. His research explores why these treatments work for some patients but not others.
June is Cancer Immunotherapy Month. Learn more about immunotherapy at Rutgers Cancer Institute, New Jersey’s only National Cancer Institute -Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.
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