Cancer: The Response of the Immune System to Cancer is Complicated
The immune system steps in and out of the spotlight a lot. For example, during times like, say, a global pandemic, people around the world started paying greater attention to their immune systems, taking steps to boost it with supplements and other self-care. But having a strong immune system is always important.
Throughout life, the body and its cells go through countless threats, changes and mutations, which are most often detected by the immune system. Once alerted to a threat, the immune system launches attacks to defeat and eliminate that threat. As it does its work building immunity for the body, the immune system can cause inflammation and other symptoms associated with illness, including fever and body aches. While you may take a drug to combat these symptoms, it is the immune system that is truly fighting the illness itself.
There are many types of immune cells, and each has a specific job. Some are spies, gathering intelligence and reporting it back to other cells. Some cells have helping and coordinating jobs. Still others directly attack threats to the body – like cancer cells.
At least they should.
However, recent cancer research has shown that the relationship between the immune system and cancer is a complicated one. This new cancer discovery shows that the immune system is actually tightly interconnected with cancer in unexpected ways, even helping cancer tumors grow and spread.
New insights into cancer and the immune system
Cancer happens when the immune system is unable to do its job effectively or isn’t strong enough to fight cancer. Cancer is also closely linked to chronic inflammation, which is caused during an immune system response. However, newer cancer studies show us that cancer turns off the immune response. In fact, it manipulates and deceives the immune system, tricking it into helping tumors grow.
For this reason, certain immune system cells, such as myeloid-derived suppressive cells (MDSCs) and tumor associated macrophages (TAMs), play an integral role in the spread of cancer throughout the body. Tumor suppressor genes, which, as the name implies, have the job of fighting cancer cells, have also been shown in cancer research to actually aid tumors, helping them to sneak past the immune system.
What’s next in cancer treatment
While chemo drugs and other cancer medicine have long been the mainstays of cancer treatment along with radiation, cancer researchers are responding to the recent cancer discovery by developing new treatment options that mimic, augment and target specific actions and parts of the immune system. The result is cancer help that will come in the form of more advanced and targeted immunotherapies.
Some new insights in cancer trials reveals that the immune system response goes through cycles. By monitoring these cycles, cancer providers can better time cancer treatments to be more effective, for example.
Vaccines can also help the immune system better identify and fight cancer. New, customized vaccines will stimulate growth of the right kind of immune system cells and instruct them to destroy cancer tumors. Other promising cancer trials are working to find ways to introduce new antibodies that prevent immune system cells from being turned off or deceived by cancer cells.
This new cancer discovery sheds a bright light on this complex relationship between the immune system response and cancer cell growth – but more importantly on ways cancer researchers can develop new options for cancer help.