UAE could play role in advancing cancer immunotherapy
UAE can contribute to the study of immune responses to differences in diet, says expert
Across the world, cancer specialists are today using immunotherapy to facilitate and enhance cancer treatment. As these immune system-stimulating drugs become more widely used, the UAE could play a key role in helping determine how dietary differences could be used to fine-tune the therapy, a top expert has said.
This is mainly because differences in diet affect the way the human body mounts its immune responses, and patients in the UAE have a very different diet compared to patients in Western countries, Dr Miriam Merad, director of precision immunology at the New Yorkbased Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told Gulf News.
“At present, there is massive investment into the field, and I believe that within the next decade or so, every patient afflicted by cancer will be treated with medicines that heighten their immune responses, in conjunction with traditional medicine if required. But there is still very little data on the efficacy of these new drugs developed in the West with patients who follow a different diet, especially as the immune system is greatly shaped by our diet and the microbes that therefore live in our intestines,” Dr Merad said.
“This is why it would benefit cancer medicine to also study how the newest immunotherapies work with patients here in the UAE and the wider region,” she added.
Dr Merad was speaking following a talk she delivered at the New York University Abu Dhabi, where she discussed the latest advances in cancer immunotherapy.
According to her, the goal of employing more immune system-empowering drugs is to make cancers less deadly, and perhaps even allow for cancer lesions to be controlled entirely by the patient’s own immune system by making them chronic instead of fatal.