Cancer is a failure of the immune system

In the healthy individual, cells are constantly becoming mutated, damaged or infected, but these destroyed by the immune system as soon as they appear.

In patients who develop cancer, this response either does not occur or is not strong enough, so the cancerous cells continue to develop and reproduce, often forming a lump of cancer cells called a tumor. In some cases, this happens because cancer cells have specific mechanisms to evade, suppress or inhibit the immune response against them.

How might immunotherapy help?

Most importantly, recent research has demonstrated that most patients who have developed a cancer do produce a T-cell response against their tumor [Boon et al., 2006, #14524; Lurquin et al., 2005, #19726], even though this immune response has failed to eliminate the cancer cells. Although this immune response was not powerful enough to reject the tumor, it does provide the basis for further immune stimulation as treatment [Mitchell, 2002, #96750]. This is where cancer immunotherapy can play an important role.

The aim of cancer immunotherapy is to enhance the immune response, making it more effective in detecting and destroying abnormal cells. It should also overcome the various ways that cancer cells may use to escape from the immune system.