immunotherapy Archives - HHO Hunterdon Hematology Oncology

When you have cancer, immunotherapy is one of the cutting-edge treatment options you have. There are many different forms of immunotherapy, and each one works to find invasive cancer cells and destroy them. Each form of immunotherapy can help different types of cancer.

At Hunterdon Oncology and Hematology, our expert team of five oncologists and hematologists offers state-of-the-art treatments for just about every form of cancer. The team is proud to provide immunotherapy as an option for many of our cancer patients who are looking for hope during their fight with cancer.

What is immunotherapy?

Immunotherapy is a modern technology that uses your immune system to fight off certain types of cancer and cancer cells. It can either boost the overall health of your immune system or help it work more efficiently.

Immunotherapy has been used to treat various types of cancer. The team at Hunterdon Oncology and Hematology use this form of therapy to treat cancers such as:

Lymphoma
Liver cancer
Stomach cancer
Cervical cancer
Bladder cancer

It’s also used for head and neck cancers, along with colon cancer and prostate cancer. While immunotherapy is a very versatile treatment, it’s not for everyone. Our team helps you determine if this is a viable treatment option for your specific condition.

What are the different types of immunotherapy?

There are many forms of immunotherapy, each of which works differently to enhance your immune system’s ability to seek out and destroy cancer cells. The forms of immunotherapy our team offers include:

T-cell transfer therapy

This form of immunotherapy helps your T-cells find and kill cancer cells more easily. Our doctors extract powerful immune cells that are attached to your tumor or cancer cells. They then take them to the lab, and find the strongest T-cells. The team multiplies these cells in the lab, and injects them back into the tumor to destroy it.

Monoclonal antibodies

Antibodies are made by your immune system to find and destroy antigens, or invaders in your body. Monoclonal antibodies are made in a lab, specifically for the antigens that are attached to cancer cells. Once they attach to the cancer antigens, your immune system can find and destroy those cells.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors

Immune checkpoints are in place to keep your immune system from attacking healthy cells when fighting off an invader. However, cancer cells sometimes turn these checkpoints on where they shouldn’t be, allowing the cells to spread.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors are treatments that turn off some of your immune system’s checkpoints, which allows it to seek out the cancer cells and destroy them.

Treatment vaccines

Cancer vaccines are similar to the other vaccines you receive for things like the flu or tetanus, which helps prevent these illnesses. Treatment vaccines use proteins from cancer cells or dead cancer cells to trigger an immune response from your body.

Immune system modulators

This form of immunotherapy basically gives your immune system a large boost. This works, because a strong immune system works better to fight off invaders, such as cancer cells. Examples of immune system modulators or interleukins and interferons.

Each form of immunotherapy works differently on your body to fight off tumors or cancer cells. The specific type of immunotherapy you need depends on your overall health, the type of cancer you have, and what other treatments you’ve tried.

Is everyone a candidate for immunotherapy?

Immunotherapy is a modern treatment option for those needing new hope in their cancer treatment. However, it’s not made for every case of cancer. You may be considered for immunotherapy if you have:

Advanced cancer
Exhausted other treatment options
Non-small cell lung cancer
Biomarkers positive for PD-L1
High tumor mutational burden
High microsatellite instability

There are a lot of up-and-coming cancer treatments, many of which our team offers to you. If you’re struggling with cancer, the team at Hunterdon Oncology and Hematology provides expert immunotherapy consults to determine what the best course of treatment is for your type and stage of cancer.

If you’d like to learn more about how immunotherapy can help you, don’t hesitate to call our office in Flemington, New Jersey at 908-788-6461, or schedule an appointment online with one of our expert doctors today.

Your immune system is an amazing component of your body. When you’re healthy, it fights off dangerous diseases and infections that would otherwise wreak havoc on your organs and tissues. However, sometimes your immune system is compromised — especially when you have cancer. Immunotherapy is a treatment that’s offered to help you fight cancer using your own immune system.

Cancer treatment is our specialty at Hunterdon Hematology Oncology. Our team consists of five expert oncologists and hematologists who are up-to-date on the latest and best treatments for your specific type of cancer.

What is immunotherapy?

There are many different types of cancer treatment, including chemotherapy and radiation. However, immunotherapy is different because it has the ability to boost your body’s natural defense against cancer — your immune system.

Immunotherapy is an umbrella term, meaning there are several different kinds of treatment. Each type works to strengthen some part of your immune system, so it can fight off cancer more effectively.

We’ll talk about specific types of immunotherapy below, but the main goal of this class is to boost your body’s response to cancer cells by making your immune system more aware of cancerous invaders in your body.

There are a lot of potential uses for immunotherapy, and it yields several major benefits over other types of cancer treatments. The main benefit is that immunotherapy uses your own body to systematically fight cancer. Other benefits include:

May help when other treatments don’t
Has far fewer side effects
Works with other treatments to increase success
Your cancer isn’t as likely to come back

While this type of treatment shows a lot of promise, it can have a down side as well. For example, you could have an allergic reaction to the treatment itself, or the medications used could damage your body in some way.

Unfortunately, it also doesn’t work for everyone. That’s because cancer cells sometimes find ways to outsmart your immune system and continue growing and spreading despite treatment.

Our team members are experts in cancer therapy, however, and they can help you determine if this form of therapy is right for you and your type of cancer.

Types of immunotherapy

Immunotherapy is a very versatile type of cancer treatment; in fact, there are many different types of treatment. Our team discusses your options based on the type of cancer you have and what works best for you.

At our facility, we offer several different options for immunotherapy. These options include:

Treatment vaccines

A vaccine is a type of therapy that helps your immune system recognize and fight off specific infections and diseases. There are many different cancer vaccines, including one that fights off cancer related to the human papillomavirus (HPV). Hepatitis B is another vaccine, one that helps prevent liver cancer.

Immune system modulators

This type of therapy targets specific areas of your immune system, teaching them to fight off cancer cells. The modulators are used to enhance your immune response to certain types of cancer. This therapy is sometimes used together with treatment vaccines.

Monoclonal antibodies

Your body makes antibodies when it senses a foreign invader. Monoclonal antibodies mimic your own antibodies, but are produced in a laboratory. They’re made of proteins that can attach to specific structures on the cancer cells’ surface, either destroying the cells or preventing their proliferation.

These antibodies also have the ability to transport radioactive materials and medications to the tumor directly.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors

Just like anything in your body, your immune system is structured so it works when needed but doesn’t go overboard when it’s not. Checkpoints keep it from going into overdrive when not threatened.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors work by overpowering the checkpoints, allowing for a stronger and more effective response to cancer cells.

T-cell transfer therapy

T-cell transfer therapy uses immune cells from your tumor. For this to work, our providers extract the strongest and most vital immune cells from the tumor itself.

Once the T-cells are extracted, the lab modifies them to be even stronger and more effective against the tumor they came from, then makes a small army of them to infuse back into your body. There, they have an enhanced response to the tumor.

To learn more about how immunotherapy can help you, call our office in Flemington, New Jersey at 908-788-6461 to schedule an appointment with one of our amazing doctors today.

Fighting cancer is a full-time job all in itself, and the treatments can be harsh and physically draining. You’ve probably heard about chemotherapy and radiation therapy as treatment options at your appointments, but have you ever heard of immunotherapy?

At Hunterdon Oncology Hematology, our goal is to help you fight off cancer with the most up-to-date treatments. Our esteemed team of doctors specializes in many forms of cancer treatment, including immunotherapy, which fights your cancer with your own immune system.

What is immunotherapy?

Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that helps your immune system fight off cancer cells in your body. The term immunotherapy encompasses several forms of treatment that essentially boost your immune response to better find and kill cancer cells.

Your immune system is made up of white blood cells, along with tissues and organs within your lymphatic system. One purpose of your immune system is to seek out and kill abnormal cells within your body that could potentially turn into cancer.

The problem with cancer cells is that they’re able to avoid your immune response in a number of different ways. One way is by changing their genetic code to be less visible to your immune system.

Cancer cells are also able to alter cells around your tumor, which makes it harder for your immune cells to find and attack them. They’re very good at disguising themselves.

Types of immunotherapy treatments

Our team offers many different forms of immunotherapy. Each one has a specialized way of helping your immune system attack the cancer cells that are making you sick. Some of the types of therapy we offer include:

Immune checkpoint inhibitors

There are checkpoints in your immune system to make sure you don’t constantly have an exaggerated immune response when you don’t need it. Immune checkpoint inhibitors block those checkpoints to allow your immune cells to overwhelm the cancer.

T-cell transfer therapy

This therapy is also known as adoptive immunotherapy or immune cell therapy. With this type of treatment, one of our doctors extracts the immune cells located within your tumor. In the lab, the best immune cells are separated from the rest and altered to make them attack cancer cells more aggressively. The lab grows a large amount of these T-cells, and then infuses them back into your body to fight off your cancer.

Immune system modulators

This type of immunotherapy increases your body’s own immune response to enhance the fight against your cancer cells. Essentially, this helps your immune system to not only seek out your cancer cells, but also to attack and kill them in large quantities.

Monoclonal antibodies

These antibodies are formulated in a lab and are made to detect specific parts of the cancer cells. In addition, antibodies can transport drugs and radioactive therapy to the cancerous tumor.

Treatment vaccines

These vaccines help to protect your body against diseases that cause cancer. The vaccine stimulates your immune system to protect your body and cells from being taken over by cancer cells.

The type of therapy that our doctors suggest depends on treatments you’ve already tried, along with the type and stage of cancer that you have.

Cancers immunotherapy can help treat

Immunotherapy is a very versatile treatment, meaning it can be used for a lot of different types of cancer. Of course, it may not be right for everyone, so discussing the treatment with one of our doctors is essential to finding out if it’s right for you. Some of the cancers that this type of treatment can help include:

Bladder cancer
Brain cancer
Breast cancer
Prostate cancer
Leukemia
Cervical cancer
Colon cancer

Immunotherapy doesn’t stop there; in fact, the list of cancers it can be used to treat goes on well beyond the above list. Like many other cancer therapies, though, it can have side effects. If our doctors are suggesting this type of treatment, it usually means that they believe the benefits considerably outweigh the side effects of the treatment.

If you think immunotherapy may be what you’ve been searching for, call our office in Flemington, New Jersey at 908-264-1798 to schedule a consultation. You can also reach out to us by using our online booking tool.

You may have heard of immunotherapy, and at least understand that it represents a huge advancement in the treatment of cancer. You may also know that, in broad terms, immunotherapy works by helping the patient’s own immune system work more effectively in finding, attacking, and killing cancer cells. To learn more about what immunotherapy is, and how it works, click here.

Because immunotherapy simply trains the patient’s immune system to work more effectively, you might also think that immunotherapy has no side effects. What we are finding, however, is that that belief is incorrect. Immunotherapy does have a spectrum of side effects. Immunotherapy patients experience side effects approximately 5-10% of the time, and these cases of side effects are life-threatening around 1-2% of the time. Being forewarned is forearmed, so let’s explore the types of immunotherapy side effects that can occur.

Most common side effects: Fatigue & Inflammation

Just like other kinds of cancer treatment, fatigue is one of the most common side effects. Feelings of overall low energy, and/or becoming exhausted quickly and easily when exertion is required, are very common side effects. This kind of physical debilitation can occur within just a few weeks of commencement of treatment but can sometimes not happen until several months – or even years – have passed. Generally, this side effect tends to get better with enough passage of time. However, while this side effect does generally improve with the passage of time, you may not return 100% to your former levels of overall energy or stamina levels. There may be some lingering, low-level fatigue that remains.

Immunotherapy medications can also cause a variety of inflammations throughout the body. Skin inflammation can manifest as a rash, feeling itchy, or as pigment changes, sometimes without a rash. Inflammation of the colon may occur, causing diarrhea and/or abdominal pain. Inflammation of the lungs can occur, causing chest pain and a cough.

Rarer side effects: Diabetes, Endocrine system problems, and Hypophysitis

Side-effects that more rarely occur include development of diabetes (a chronic condition that negatively impacts how the body processes glucose, or in more severe cases, progresses to the point that the pancreas produces little-to-no insulin, the critically important hormone which regulates the amount of glucose in the blood).

Another rarely occurring side effect is damage to the body’s endocrine system, responsible for how the body produces and regulates hormones – all hormones, not just insulin. Another rare, but more concerning side effect is the inflammation of the pituitary gland, known as hypophysitis. Hypophysitis manifests in many different ways, so a definitive diagnosis requires blood work. Symptoms include headache, fever, or fatigue.

Side effects do not depend on cancer type

The side effects described above do not generally depend on the patient’s type of cancer. Rather, they depend more on the type of immunotherapy medication prescribed for cancer treatment.

Management of side effects

Research has found that the most appropriate treatment for the various side effects that occur depends on the severity of the effect. Many patients receiving immunotherapy have already received chemotherapy, so they have most likely already experienced the milder side effects like fatigue, rash, and/or cough. As a result, they have already developed the necessary coping skills and/or method of treatment for them.

When it comes to diarrhea, however, treatment approach is critical. The most highly preferred treatment approach is modification of diet. Limiting dairy products can be very important in this case. The reason that dietary changes are preferred is that anti-diarrheal medications can cause severe, even life-threatening, complications. If the diarrhea problem is severe, your doctor may recommend a temporary cessation of immunotherapy, and replacement with an immunosuppressant. This can help to reduce the inflammation behind the diarrhea to a safer level, yielding improvement in diarrheal symptoms.

Patients who develop diabetes may also require a temporary pause on the immunotherapy drugs, combined with insulin medication treatment. In any case, the temporary pause can help the body to recover, heal, and reduce the severity and/or existence of unwanted side effects. The ultimate goal, however, is to resume immunotherapy treatment; to attack and kill the tumor’s cancer cells.

Side effects have nothing to do with immunotherapy effectiveness

Patients often believe that the presence and severity of side effects is also a measure of the effectiveness of the immunotherapy treatment. This is not true. Patients whose immunotherapy treatment is highly effective often experience no side effects. This can lead them to suspect that they are only receiving a placebo medication in a secret clinical trial, or that the immunotherapy medication isn’t working at all. This is simply not true. Remember: only 5-10% of immunotherapy patients experience any side effects. So, 90-95% of immunotherapy patients have no side effects whatsoever!

Self-awareness is critical

So, the most important advice you can receive relative to the presence or absence of side effects is heightened self (and body) awareness. Pay attention to what your body is trying to tell you, right from the get-go! Make sure that your doctor, as well as your pharmacist, spend lots (and lots) of time with you, going over all the possible side-effects associated with your immunotherapy medication, and make sure you fully understand everything they are saying to you. Ask as many questions as you feel you need to and do not assume that you are a “burden” to them. After all, this is your treatment, and this is your life! You are the one whose life and well-being are being affected. It is your responsibility to ensure that you are completely comfortable with every aspect of your treatment. It is your doctor’s responsibility to ensure that you are, indeed, fully comfortable with all aspects of your treatment.

Cancer immunotherapy uses the immune system or the body’s defense system to fight cancer. Before learning more about immunotherapy, you may want to read a quick overview of how the immune system works.

Immune System Overview

The immune system protects the body against diseases. Immune system cells called antigen-presenting cells patrol the body. When antigen-presenting cells find foreign cells, such as viruses and bacteria, they send a signal to special cells called T-cells, which attack the foreign cells. After all foreign cells have been killed, an immune system regulator called a checkpoint sends a signal to T-cells to stop their attack. This prevents T-cells from killing healthy cells.

What is immunotherapy for cancer?

Cancer cells are different than viruses and bacteria because they disguise themselves as normal, healthy cells. Antigen-presenting cells are not able to detect cancer cells, so a signal is never sent to T-cells. Thus, cancer cells multiply and spread and cancer progresses into more serious stages.

Immunotherapy stops immune cells from being tricked. There are different types of cancer immunotherapy. Each helps the immune system recognize cancer cells and start an immune response against them. This treatment approach is new and promising because it uses the body’s own resources, rather than surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy, to treat cancer. In many cases, this means there may be less unwanted treatment side effects.

How effective is immunotherapy?

Cancer immunotherapy may help cancer go into remission, or even cure it in some cases. It may not work for all patients and all cancers. And because it is a relatively new treatment option, more research needs to be done to determine exactly which patients can benefit.

Still, there are certain tests that doctors can perform that may help them decide if immunotherapy can help a patient. Protein level tests and genetic tests are the two most common. High protein levels and DNA changes in cancer cells may predict that cancer will respond well to immunotherapy.

What is the difference between immunotherapy and other types of cancer treatments?

Each cancer treatment option works differently. The five treatment options are:

Surgery. Cancer tissue is surgically removed.
Radiation therapy. X-rays break DNA in cancer cells, which prevents them from growing and spreading.
Chemotherapy. Drugs destroy cancer cells.
Targeted therapy. Drugs target cancer cells’ genes and proteins to stop them from working properly, which can stop cells from growing, or even kill them.
Immunotherapy. Different types of treatments are used to start an immune response against cancer cells.

Certain treatments may be used for certain cancers. In some cases, multiple treatments may be used.

Distinguishing features of each type of cancer treatment are:

Surgery may be effective for some early stage cancers
Radiation therapy and chemotherapy destroy healthy cells, which may cause unpleasant side effects
Targeted therapy and immunotherapy may only be effective for some patients and some cancers

A board-certified and fellowship-trained oncologist works with patients to find the most appropriate treatment option(s).

What types of cancer can be treated with immunotherapy?

Cancer immunotherapy has been tested on many of the most common types of cancer. An oncologist may recommend immunotherapy to treat:

Bladder cancer
Breast cancer
Head and neck cancer
Kidney cancer
Lymphoma
Prostate cancer
Small cell lung cancer
Melanoma/ Skin cancer

Research is being done to test immunotherapy on other types of cancer.

How is immunotherapy treatment given?

Cancer immunotherapy treatment is given at an oncologist’s office or an outpatient hospital unit. An overnight hospital stay is not necessary. Treatment may be administered:

Intravenously
Orally
Topically (for skin cancers)
Intravesical (through the bladder)

The patient’s response to treatment is closely monitored. Physical exams, blood tests, and scans are performed to see if cancer cells are responding to treatment.

How long does it take for immunotherapy to work for cancer?

Depending on the type of immunotherapy, treatment may be given daily, weekly, or monthly. There may be a break in treatment to give cells a chance to rest. Another therapy cycle may start after the break. The number of cycles a patient receives depends on the type of treatment and the type of the cancer. In some cases, immunotherapy may be combined with other cancer treatments.

The amount of time it takes for cancer immunotherapy to work is different for every patient. As previously mentioned, each patient’s response to treatment is closely monitored. Patients visit their oncologist frequently while undergoing treatment. The oncologist asks the patient questions about their symptoms and health. Answers to the questions and the medical study results give the oncologist important information about how well the immunotherapy is working.

More about cancer immunotherapy…

This article is the first of a three-article series on cancer immunotherapy. In the next article, you will learn more about different types of immunotherapy in detail.

Sources:
National Cancer Institute: “Immunotherapy to Treat Cancer“

Cleveland Clinic: “Immunotherapy: Is It Right for Your Cancer Type?”

WebMD: “How Immunotherapy Works to Kill Cancer Cells“