Immunotherapy is a relatively new form of treatment for cancer that uses the body's own immune system to fight cancer cells. It's also referred to as biological therapy or biotherapy.

Immunotherapy drugs work in different ways. Some stimulate the immune system directly while others just remove inhibitors allowing the immune system to recognize cancer cells.

In some types of immunotherapy, immune cells are removed from a cancer patient's body, genetically-modified, then put back into the patient's body.

Genetically-modified vaccines are also used in immunotherapy.

The American Cancer Society website has a page entitled
Cancer Immunotherapy which has more information.

The American Cancer Society website also has a page entitled What’s new in kidney cancer research and treatment? which discusses the most recent cancer research and treatments.

On June 2, 2015, NPR's The Diane Rehm Show aired a very informative one-hour program on immunotherapy entitled "The Latest Research On Using The Body’s Own Immune System To Fight Cancer".

Diane's guests were:

• Dr. Steven Rosenberg, chief of surgery, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health
• Dr. John Sampson, chief of neurosurgery, Duke University Medical Center
• Dr. Suzanne Topalian, professor of surgery and oncology and director, Johns Hopkins Melanoma Program at Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center

Here's a list of highlights from the program:

• Surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, when properly applied, cure just over half of all people who develop cancer
• Immunotherapy stimulates the body's own natural immune system so it can recognize the cancer as foreign and attempt to destroy it
• The types of drugs that are used to stimulate, or "take the brakes off", the immune system are called "immune checkpoint inhibitors"
• An immune checkpoint inhibitor drug called anti-PDL1 seems to be effective in treating many different kinds of cancer
• Cancer vaccines and tetanus vaccines administered together have been successful in significantly extending the lifespan of some cancer patients
• Of the approximately 1,000 clinical trials conducted with cancer vaccines, including tens of thousands of patients, only one vaccine has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, a drug for prostate cancer that can prolong survival by three to four months
• Solid cancers (as opposed to cancers in the blood) comprise about 90 percent of all cancers, and solid cancers account for almost 90 percent of all deaths from cancer
• Immunotherapy works in one of two ways - one way simply stimulates the immune system directly (for example, the drug interleukin 2), and the other way (immune checkpoint inhibitor) removes immune system inhibitors
• Currently, of the approximately 50% of cancer patients that are not cured by surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, immunotherapy is effective in just a small percentage (particularly with cancers that have a large number of mutations like melanoma, lung cancer, kidney cancer, and colon cancer)
• Researchers are trying to identify "markers" (proteins on the surface of cancer cells) so it's easier to know what kinds of immunotherapy treatments are most likely to work on specific cancers
• Researchers around the world have been successful taking immune cells (lymphocytes or t-cells) from cancer patients bodies, genetically engineering them to recognize cancer cells, reproducing them in mass quantities, and then returning them to the patients bodies to fight the cancer
• It's the sequential accumulation of mutations in normal DNA that leads to cancer, but the sequences of mutations are quite different depending on the type of cancer
• In general, the side effects of immunotherapy are less than the side effects of radiation and chemotherapy, but some immunotherapy drugs can cause swelling, rashes, inflammation in the lung and the colon, endocrine gland abnormalities, and liver abnormalities
• The current costs of immunotherapy are very high, with a yearly drug supply easily exceeding $100,000
• Ketogenic diets and eliminating glucose in the diet can help in fighting certain types of cancer
• Because there is so much ongoing cancer research, patients with later-stage cancer should consider going to an academic medical center for a consultation to be sure there isn't some new treatment available that their oncologist may not know about

Here's a list of some FDA-approved immunotherapy drugs:

• Unituxin (dinutuximab), for high-risk young children with neuroblastoma, approved on March 10, 2015
• Opdivo (nivolumab), for advanced (metastatic) squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), approved on March 4, 2015
• Opdivo (nivolumab), for advanced melanoma, announced on December 22, 2014
• Keytruda (pembrolizumab), for advanced melanoma, approved on September 4, 2014
• Yervoy (ipilimumab), for late-stage (metastatic) melanoma, approved on March 25, 2011
• PROVENGE (sipuleucel-T), for advanced prostate cancer, approved on April 29, 2010
• Proleukin (aldesleukin), for metastatic melanoma (approved in 1998) and metastatic renal cell carcinoma (metastatic kidney cancer) (approved in 1992)

The National Cancer Institute website has a page entitled Find a Clinical Trial where you can search by cancer type, geographic location, and other search terms for NCI-supported clinical trials currently accepting participants, or you can contact the NCI by phone at 1-800-4CANCER.

The National Cancer Institute website also has a page entitled Cancer Staging which explains the different stages of cancer.

More:

• CBS 60 Minutes | Killing Cancer | Immunotherapy | Health and Wellness Resource
• Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies | Film by Ken Burns | Health and Wellness Resource
• Cancer Immunotherapy | American Cancer Society
• FDA Grants Breakthrough Therapy Designation for Genentech’s Investigational Cancer Immunotherapy MPDL3280A (anti-PDL1) in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer | Genentech
• Anti-PDL1 clinical trials | Genentech
• Interleukin 2 | Wikipedia
• Drugs.com