Immunotherapy for Cancer

T-cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy that makes your own immune cells better able to attack cancer. There are two main types of T-cell transfer therapy: tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (or TIL) therapy and CAR T-cell therapy. Both involve collecting your own immune cells, growing large numbers of these cells in the lab, and then giving the cells back to you through a needle in your vein. T-cell transfer therapy is also called adoptive cell therapy, adoptive immunotherapy, and immune cell therapy. The process of growing your T cells in the lab can take 2 to 8 weeks.

The approach for increasing the efficacy of T cell therapy have been by doing the modifications to the host environment to improve the homeostatic expansion of infused T cells or to eliminate inhibitory T cell .The idea behind this approach is that the lymphocytes that are in or near the tumor have already shown the ability to recognize your tumor cells. But there may not be enough of them to kill the tumor or to overcome the signals that the tumor is releasing to suppress the immune system. Giving you large numbers of the lymphocytes that react best with the tumor can help to overcome these barriers.

Limitation and challenge of T cell therapy is it can cause side effects, which people experience in different ways. The side effects may have and how serious they are will depend on how healthy the patients are before treatment, their type of cancer, how advanced it is, the type of T-cell transfer therapy the patients are receiving, and the dose and varying etiology of the cancer origin. When other treatment procedures are not working and relapsing cancer or resistance to cancer drugs, this therapy can be useful.

Dr.Pravin Patel, Dr.Pr avin Patel Innovative Hospital & Research Center Pvt.Ltd. www.drpatelshopital.com