PROSPECTS OF CANCER IMMUNOTHERAPY

Running head: BIOLOGY
PROSPECTS OF CANCER IMMUNOTHERAPY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BIOLOGY
Summary
A drug known as Pembrolizumab has been identified as a humanized anti-PD-1 antibody that was the most
effective anti-cancer drug according to the US FDA approval of September 2014. Many studies have been
performed on a 296 patient clinical trial which is described as an objective response in NSCLC patients affected
by melanoma. The discovery of ICIs (Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors) has been found to be the most pivotal
shift associated with fighting cancer. FDA has approved the use of ipilimumab for the treatment of metastatic
melanoma associated with improved overall survival of cancer patients. This paper will discuss the main body
of this assignment followed by the discussion and finally ending in conclusion.
Table of Content

2BIOLOGY
s
Introduction..............................................................................................................................................................3
Main Body................................................................................................................................................................3
Discussion................................................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................................3
References................................................................................................................................................................4

3BIOLOGY
Introduction
Cancer has been found to be an adamant drive for an aggressive therapeutics development, which are
aimed at the minimization of cancer cell proliferation and metastasis inhibition. Radiation therapy has been
identified as one of the most effective means of systemic treatment. Genotoxic drugs falling in the category of
chemotherapeutic agents, which are, associated with a combination of short term side effects. Surgical excision
of tumours has been identified to be effective in the early stages of the disease (Valavanidis 2018).
Immunotherapy of cancer has been found to become one of the staple modern oncology for a long time. This
term paper will discuss the prospects of cancer therapy by the exploitation of the immune system. This paper has
begun with a summary followed by a short introduction on the topic. Then this paper will discuss the main body
of this assignment followed by the discussion and finally ending in conclusion.
Main Body
According to Kottschade (2019), it can be stated that cancer treatments which involve immunotherapy
have posed a major impact on long term survival, survivorship issues and toxicity. The body of this term paper
will discuss the method used to describe the prospects of immune system exploitation in cancer treatment. Data
were collected from two main sources of literature. One of the paper is written by Kottschade (2019) and the
other is written by Koury et al. (2018). The first paper discussed the future of immunotherapy associated with
the treatment of cancer. The second paper discussed the process of immune system exploitation associated with
the treatment of cancer. This section will discuss some salient features of immunotherapy and cancer treatment
with the data obtained from the two studies. These points will be justified by other sources of literature in the
discussion section. Koury et al. (2018) stated that the cells adopt specialized cellular mechanisms which are
needed to facilitate the tumour microenvironment development. Checkpoints of the immune system have been
found to be associated with autoimmunity. The checkpoint receptors of the immune system have been found to
be subjected to T cell-mediated ani tumour responses. Immune system checkpoints receptor has been found to
be targeted by CTLA-4 (cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen 4). A drug known as Pembrolizumab has
been identified as a humanized anti-PD-1 antibody that was the most effective anti-cancer drug according to the
US FDA approval of September 2014. Many studies have been performed on a 296 patient clinical trial which is
described as an objective response in NSCLC patients affected by melanoma. These patients showed a great
recovery after the treatment with Pembrolizumab. However, a drug known as Nivolumab gained US FDA
approval in December 2014 as a more effective drug for cancer therapy. Treatment of sarcomas of bone marrow
and soft tissues are tested by using Nivolumab. The most significant drawback has been found to be associated
with the combinatorial treatments associated with a commensurate increase in adverse effects. ACT (adoptive
cell transfer) technology has been found to take advantage of the immune cells which are surrounding the
environment containing the tumour. IL-2 has been found to be crucial for the expansion of lymphocytes.
Chimeric antigen receptor T cells have been found to transfer the CAR(chimeric antigen receptor) T cells. These
T cells are in turn guided to the cancer target cells. These are the salient features of collected from the research
papers discussing the process of immune system exploitation for the treatment of cancer.
Discussion
A long player role in the development and treatment of cancer has been found to be associated with the
immune system (Ribas and Wolchok 2018). The discovery of ICIs (Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors) has been
found to be the most pivotal shift associated with fighting cancer. FDA has approved the use of ipilimumab for
the treatment of metastatic melanoma associated with improved overall survival of cancer patients. However,
various research studies identified the fact that life-threatening situations arose due to auto-immune syndromes.
Significant financial problems have been found to be associated with the use of this drug in the treatment of
cancer. Long term toxicity has been found to be managed by the advent of this antibiotic (Riley et al. 2019).
After a successful increase in the survival rates associated with the therapy with ICI has been found to be linked
with various side effects. The side effects arise from the direct overstimulation associated with the immune
system which ranges anywhere from the first dose after the discontinuation of therapy. Survivorship issues have
been found to be caused in patients with metastatic disease in people with an average survival rate measured in
months. Fertility issues have been found to be one of the most significant issues associated with survivorship
problems. Financial toxicity is another issue associated with the problems of immunotherapy. Cancer treatment
has been defined as one of the major contributors to the cost of medical care. According to the estimations, more
than one lakh dollars are spent on cancer drugs since 2011. Immunotherapies considering ICIs and CAR T cells
has been found to be promising for the treatment of universally fatal diagnoses (June et al. 2018). These are the
overall discussions that can be done based on the topic of this study.

4BIOLOGY
Conclusion
On a concluding note it can be stated that when ICIs were associated with cancer treatment, long term
consequences were found to be linked with them. From the above study, it can be observed that cancer has been
found to be an adamant drive for an aggressive therapeutics development, which are aimed at the minimization
of cancer cell proliferation and metastasis inhibition. According to the main body of the paper, radiation therapy
has been identified as one of the most effective means of systemic treatment. Genotoxic drugs falling in the
category of chemotherapeutic agents, which are, associated with a combination of short term side effects.
Surgical excision of tumours has been identified to be effective in the early stages of the disease. Thus it can be
stated that immunotherapy of cancer has been found to become one of the staple modern oncology for a long
time. This term paper will discuss the prospects of cancer therapy by the exploitation of the immune system.
Patients with metastatic disease have been found to live longer and patients who have the chance of getting
cured with surgery and adjuvant therapy also lives longer. Survivorship issues have not only been found to be
linked with acute toxicity issues, but they are also connected to long-term consequences. This is all about the
prospects of cancer and its treatment by the exploitation of immunotherapy.

5BIOLOGY
References
June, C.H., O’Connor, R.S., Kawalekar, O.U., Ghassemi, S. and Milone, M.C., 2018. CAR T cell
immunotherapy for human cancer. Science, 359(6382), pp.1361-1365.
Kottschade, L. A. (2019, August). The Future of Immunotherapy in the Treatment of Cancer. In Seminars in
oncology nursing (p. 150934). WB Saunders.
Koury, J., Lucero, M., Cato, C., Chang, L., Geiger, J., Henry, D., Hernandez, J., Hung, F., Kaur, P., Teskey, G.
and Tran, A., 2018. Immunotherapies: exploiting the immune system for cancer treatment. Journal of
immunology research, 2018.
Ribas, A. and Wolchok, J.D., 2018. Cancer immunotherapy using checkpoint blockade. Science, 359(6382),
pp.1350-1355.
Riley, R.S., June, C.H., Langer, R. and Mitchell, M.J., 2019. Delivery technologies for cancer
immunotherapy. Nature reviews Drug discovery, 18(3), pp.175-196.
Valavanidis, A., 2018. Scientific Reviews. ecosystems, 10, p.13.