Immunotherapy (in Cancer Treatment)

Chemotherapy gives a chemical poison directly to the cells themselves (and also kills other healthy cells like hair). Immunotherapy, on the other hand, acts not on the cancer cell but on your immune system, enabling it to fight. For this reason, classic chemotherapy side effects such as hair loss, severe nausea, or collapse of the blood picture are not seen in immunotherapy.

It has shown miraculous, very long-term (even completely curative) survival successes, especially in Malignant Melanoma (skin cancer), non-small cell Lung Cancer, Kidney, and Bladder cancers. It is receiving approval for new cancer types every passing day.

Although it does not have classic side effects, because it overworks the immune system, the immune army can rarely attack its own body (lungs, thyroid gland, or intestines), causing autoimmune inflammations (pneumonitis, colitis). These side effects are kept under control with drugs like cortisone.

Unfortunately, it does not work in every patient. To understand whether immunotherapy will work, genetic/protein tests such as "PD-L1, MSI" are performed on the piece taken from the tumor tissue to measure the structural compatibility of the tumor. Tremendous responses are obtained in patients carrying the appropriate targets.