A new dawn for cancer patients with 70% reduction in risk of death in 5 years? Medical explanation of immune cell therapy in detail
Help cancer patients strengthen their immune army! What is immune cell therapy?
Cancer is the most serious disease that threatens human life and health in the 21st century. In recent years, the application and research of “immunotherapy” is in the ascendant and is regarded as a new hope for the treatment of cancer. Broadly speaking, immunotherapy includes three modes: immune drug therapy, cancer vaccines and immune cell therapy. “Immune cell therapy” is to culture and train the removed immune cells to create an immune army and inject them back into the body, thereby enhancing the ability to resist cancer cells. .
Dr. Xie Yinghua, former vice president of Wanfang Hospital and chairman of the Taiwan Community Medical Association, explained that immune cell therapy strengthens the immune system of cancer patients so that the patient can rely on his own immune system to fight cancer cells. First, immune cells are isolated through blood drawing, trained, cultured, amplified, and then injected back into the patient’s body as reinforcements for the body’s immune army. This is a new trend in precision cancer treatment.
Dr. Xie Yinghua pointed out that immune cell therapy includes many types of T cells, such as cytotoxic T cells, memory T cells, helper T cells, etc. Among them, “memory T cells” have a longer lifespan and are responsible for storing the memory of cancer cell antigens. , can continuously activate new T cells. A 2019 Korean clinical trial found that after active treatment, immune cell therapy with memory T cells reduced the risk of death by nearly 70% in patients with liver cancer within 5 years, and the treatment effect was quite significant.
Get your immune system back to normal! Is immune cell therapy the dawn of liver cancer?
Tang Zhichao, chairman of Lujia Biomedical and a medical doctor at Yang-Ming University, said that immune drug therapy targets the proteins of cancer cells that suppress the immune system, so that the immune system can attack cancer cells, but the premise is that the patient’s body needs to have enough immune cells. However, cancer patients often have very few memory T cells that can attack cancer cells, or even have no normal functions. It is even more necessary to combine immune cell therapy to allow the immune system to play its role in attacking tumors.
“As far as Japan is concerned, immune drug therapy combined with immune cell therapy has become a routine combined treatment method. It can not only reduce the side effects of immunotherapy and the probability of “immune storm”, but also see many cases of combined treatment, such as immune cell therapy combined with chemotherapy. , radiotherapy, and targeted therapy, giving patients better survival rates!”
Tang Zhichao pointed out that the development direction of immune cell therapy still requires large-scale clinical trials to obtain precise empirical medical evidence. The U.S. FDA has approved memory T-cell immune cell therapy as an orphan drug for liver cancer and has been approved to start new drug research. Taiwan has also followed the footsteps of the United States and has conducted liver cancer clinical trials with 13 hospitals in Taiwan. It is expected to apply for U.S. FDA approval in 2024. Conditions permitting, in the future we hope to have more clear data on immune cell therapy for liver cancer and other solid cancers, which will become a new dawn for cancer treatment.
Combined chemotherapy has remarkable results! Immune cell therapy increases overall survival
“Immune cell therapy can not only be used alone, but also has significant clinical results when combined with traditional chemotherapy!” Dr. Lin Shuilong, clinical professor of surgery at Fu Jen Catholic University and director of the Association for Healthcare Quality Initiative, said that the study found that immune cell therapy combined with traditional chemotherapy is more effective than For patients treated with chemotherapy alone, the overall survival time is increased by about 40%, and the disease progression-free survival time is also increased by about 40%. And the side effects are significantly lower.
Dr. Lin Shuilong explained that the effect of immune cell therapy depends largely on the number of “memory T cells”. Since memory T cells survive longer than other T cells and have stronger anti-cancer immunity, they can be combined Used after the completion of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, or in combination with targeted drugs or hormonal therapy. Currently, immune cell therapy covers 16 types of cancer, and there are 7 institutes in Taiwan that have mastered the technology.
Professor Chen Guangyao, chairman of the Tao Shengyang Anti-Cancer Foundation, pointed out that with the development of standardized cancer treatment, there is still a lack of treatment options that are precise, have low side effects and have good control rates. With reference to the development and research results of cellular immunotherapy in Japan over the past 10 years, we are gradually finding a way to help cancer patients live longer. We look forward to more cancer patients having the opportunity to evaluate immune cell therapy and seize the golden treatment period.
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