IMMUNOTHERAPY: The new ‘Fourth Pillar’ of Cancer Treatment

Traditionally, there have been three ways to treat cancer: surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Using surgery to cut out cancer tumours is an ancient practice, with references to such attempts going back 3,000 years to the pharaohs’ Egypt and to ancient Rome. The x-ray was discovered in 1896 and by the early years of the 20th century the power of radiation was being devel

“These treatments work in different ways to activate the immune system so that it becomes able to ‘see’ the cancer and attack it” – STÉPHANIE MICHAUD, PRESIDENT & CEO OF BIOCANRX

oped to treat cancer by destroying tumour tissue with a radioactive assault. Radiation thus became the second pillar of cancer therapy and has been greatly enhanced and refined over the past century.

The third pillar was added in the late 1940s and 1950s with the development of chemotherapies. Of course, there have been many improvements in such drugs since then as our

knowledge of cancer has grown and deepened, but for the past 75 years, those were the three pillars of cancer therapy.

However, a fourth pillar was always lurking in the minds of some cancer experts. The idea was to train the body’s own immune system to recognize cancer cells as harmful invaders in the same way it hunts down and kills many invading bacteria and viruses.

As long ago as the 1890s, New York City surgeon Dr. William Coley, who frequently operated on people with cancer, noticed that certain patients who had had an infection fared better against their cancer than others. He theorized that the stimulation of the body’s immune system by the original infection had in some way strengthened it to allow it to fight and kill the cancer cells.

This is, in its simplest form, the idea behind what is now the fourth pillar of cancer treatment – immunotherapy, using the body’s own immune system to find and kill cancer cells.

While Dr. Coley’s approach claimed some modest success, the search for cancer treatments moved elsewhere.

A century later, now that scientists have a much better under