Immunotherapy can empower your immune system against cancer.
The immune system is naturally equipped to protect us against cancer. Cytotoxic T lymphocytes—otherwise known as killer T cells—are especially effective at targeting tumors. However, cancers sometimes figure out how to outsmart the immune system and protect themselves.
Immunotherapy aims to reverse that situation.
Over the next thirty days, we’ll be highlighting a wide scope of immune-based approaches that are already improving outcomes for patients. Many of these treatments work by either directly or indirectly enhancing the activity of T cells (the blue/white cells pictured aboved).
Much of what we know about the immune system and its relationship to cancer was discovered by scientists affiliated with the Cancer Research Institute (CRI), which since 1953 has served as the world’s leading (and for several decades only) nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to transforming cancer patient care by advancing immunotherapy and the science behind it.
Image credit: Cancer Research Institute