As scientists learn more about the biology of breast cancer, treatments are increasingly being tailored to the individual and becoming more personalized. This shift to personalized medicine has resulted in many new targeted therapies, including immunotherapy. Today, immunotherapy is quickly becoming one of the most exciting areas of breast cancer research.
Immunotherapy is an innovative, emerging treatment for some people with breast cancer who have limited options beyond chemotherapy. But what exactly is immunotherapy? How does it work, and how does it compare to current, trusted standards of care like chemotherapy or radiation? Here are some answers to help demystify immunotherapy as a treatment option for some types of breast cancer, as this treatment isn’t right for every type of breast cancer.
What Exactly is Immunotherapy?
Immunotherapy is a type of treatment that helps your body’s immune system recognize and destroy cancer cells. Unlike traditional breast cancer treatments that are geared toward directly killing cancer cells, immunotherapies target the immune system to attack the cancer cells.
Your immune system is like a small but mighty army that helps your body fight off foreign invaders, including viruses, bacteria and even cancer. But cancer cells can be sneaky, sometimes tricking the immune system or blocking it from doing its job.
When your body’s immune “army” doesn’t have enough troops to fight cancer effectively, immunotherapy provides a significant power boost to the immune system, much like reinforcements, giving it extra strength to attack the enemy. Immunotherapy can help your immune system recognize disguised cancer cells and unmask them. It can also help take off the “brakes” that sometimes prevent immune cells from going full force against cancer cells.
Is Immunotherapy Right for Me?
Because of its more targeted approach, immunotherapy works well for some patients when other treatments fail. Compared to chemotherapy, immunotherapy also tends to have fewer and less severe side effects, making treatment more tolerable for patients.
One type of immunotherapy called a checkpoint inhibitor helps immune cells called T cells recognize cancer cells as foreign and attack them. Checkpoint inhibitors are currently a standard of care for some patients with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), a type of breast cancer that lacks the hormone receptors that can be targeted by other treatments. Studies are currently underway to help make immunotherapy more widely available for other types of breast cancer.
Are There Any Risks or Side Effects?
While this treatment offers several benefits, it also carries certain risks. Because immunotherapy activates the immune system, it can cause immune-related side effects, including fatigue, skin reactions, gastrointestinal issues, flu-like symptoms and inflammation of organs like the lungs or liver and endocrine disorders. Inflammation of the lungs can be life threatening, so you should tell your doctor right away if your treatment is causing breathing problems or shortness of breath.
In rare cases, immunotherapy can cause the immune system to mistakenly attack the body’s own healthy organs. And like many other treatments, immunotherapy can lose its effectiveness over time as some tumors may become resistant to treatment.
Immunotherapy can also be very expensive for some patients, even with insurance coverage, and difficult to access.
Immunotherapy is a Growing Area of Research
Immunotherapy continues to be one of the most exciting and rapidly growing areas of research. Komen Scholar Elizabeth Mittendorf, M.D., Ph.D., MHCM, has led many clinical trials focused on immunotherapy for breast cancer.
With support from Komen, Dr. Mittendorf is studying tissue samples from patients with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer to understand how tumors avoid detection by the immune system and how immunotherapy might help it to better recognize and destroy these invaders.
“The reason immunotherapy may actually help us to achieve a cure is because immunotherapy is a treatment that teaches your immune system to recognize a tumor as something that’s foreign and needs to be eliminated,” she explains. “This is called an adaptive immune response, and it can be lifelong.”
Researchers are also exploring the potential of combining immunotherapy with other treatments to further enhance their effectiveness. Another exciting area of research is the development of breast cancer vaccines that train the immune system to recognize and attack specific parts of cancer cells.
Through the innovative work of many dedicated researchers, immunotherapy is already changing the landscape of breast cancer treatment for many patients. More importantly, it offers hope to some who previously had limited treatment options. Ask your doctor if immunotherapy might be a good option for you.
Learn more about immunotherapy:
- Read more about immunotherapy on our ABC pages.
- Would you like to be part of an immunotherapy clinical trial? Click here.
- Watch our next installment of Breast Cancer Breakthroughs, where we will take a deeper dive into some of the latest research that is exploring the possibilities of immunotherapy in treating TNBC.
