Immunotherapies: Types, Interaction with Immune System, and New Developments

Running Head: IMMUNITY RELATED THERPIES 0
IMMUNOTHERAPIES
Student NAME

IMMUNITY RELATED THERAPIES 1
Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Concept of Immunotherapy.........................................................................................................................2
Various Types of Therapies and their Interaction with the Immune System...............................................3
Activation Immunotherapies...................................................................................................................3
Immune enhancement therapies...............................................................................................................4
Helminthic therapies...............................................................................................................................6
Newer Types of Immunotherapies in Development....................................................................................7
PD-1 pathway targeting therapy..............................................................................................................7
IgV targeted therapy................................................................................................................................7
DC-based vaccination..............................................................................................................................7
Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs)......................................................................................................8
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................8
References.................................................................................................................................................10

IMMUNITY RELATED THERAPIES 2
Introduction
Immunotherapy is used for the purpose of treating the disease by two different ways, suppressing
or activating the immune system. Immunotherapies are designed to trigger or exhibit an immune
response are called activation immunotherapies. On the other hand, the therapies that suppress or
reduce the immune response are known as suppression immunotherapies (Gorelik et al., 2015).
Immune therapies can be used to treat the infections caused by foreign invaders by killing them
and resolve the autoimmunity in which the person’s immune system attacks in its own cells or
organs. This report focuses on the concept of immunotherapies in detail, along with the various
types of therapies and their interaction with the immune system. The report also describes the
new types of immunotherapies that are under the process of development.
Concept of Immunotherapy
The immune system is the collection of specific or particular cells, organs, and the substances
that assist in protecting an individual from different diseases and infections. The immune system
prepares substances and immune cells that travel throughout the body for its protection from
germs causing infections. The immune system tracks all the substances that are normally found
in the body (Rosenberg and Restifo, 2015) an alarm is raised by the immune system whenever it
comes in contact with a new substance that is not recognizable. This further causes the immune
system to attack such substance on a primary basis (Eggermont, Kroemer, and Zitvogel, 2013)
For example; substances such as certain proteins are contained by the germs which are not found
normally in the human body. In other words, such substances are considered to be "foreign" by
the immune system and therefore, it attacks them. The immune response bears the capability of
destroying anything that contains a foreign substance such as cancer cells or germs

IMMUNITY RELATED THERAPIES 3
Immunotherapy can also be called biological therapy is a type of cancer treatment with the help
of which the natural defenses of the body to fight the disease are boosted. The use of substances
made by the body or laboratory is made by immunotherapy for the purpose of improving or
restoring the immune system function (Rosenberg and Restifo, 2015). Immunotherapy performs
its work by way of slowing or stopping the growth of disease cells, stopping the spread of cancer
to different parts of the body, assisting the immune system in the destroying of cancer cells. In
the recent time, the researchers, pharmaceutical companies and clinicians have shown great
interest in immunotherapy especially due to its promise of treating different forms of cancer.
Immunomodulatory regimens are popular as it leads to fewer side effects as compared to that of
the existing drugs (Salama, Postow, and Salama, 2016)
Various Types of Therapies and their Interaction with the Immune System
Activation Immunotherapies
Dendritic Cell-Based Pump-Priming- in this type of therapy, the cytotoxic response is
activated towards an antigen through the stimulation of dendritic cells. Dendritic cells are a kind
of an antigen presenting cell that are collected from the person requiring immunotherapy. Such
cells are then either pulsed with tumor lysate or antigen or transfected with a type of viral vector
leading them to show the antigen. Upon transfusion into an individual, the antigen is presented
by the activated cells to the effector lymphocytes. This, in turn, initiates the cytotoxic response
against the tumor cells that expressing the antigen. One of the examples of this approach is
cancer vaccine Sipuleucel- T (Ribas, 2015).