Immunotherapy treatment: New hope in fighting lung cancer
Lung cancer remains the most common disease and has the most number of victims all over the wolrd. The idea of battling this form of cancer and the others through one’s immune system is a concept that has fascinated most populations.
With the advent of immunotherapy to combat cancer, many have thought of strengthening their immune system with the hope of alleviating their conditions and prolonging survival.
However, Dr. Wong Seng Weng, consultant medical oncologist and medical director at The Cancer Centre (Singapore Medical Group) in Paragon Medical and Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre, said that the survival of a patient is not determined solely by the strength of his immune system.
“We come to realize that the immune system doesn’t attack the cancer because it is weak; it’s because the immune system is unable to recognize the cancer for what it is,” Wong said.
As immunotherapy gains approval from the Philippine Food and Drug Administration as a new treatment option for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), Wong clarified that the antibody is not used to strengthen the immune system but to help it identify the cancer cells, enabling the immune system to attack it.
Its recent clinical testing has established the high efficacy of immunotherapy as a treatment for cancer, with few side effects such as development of rashes that easily fade when the immune system is calmed down.
The development of this line of treatment coupled with the existing treatments, chemotherapy and targeted therapy is seen as a pathway toward an era of precision medicine.
“Before, we always look for location; always just one mode of treatment. Now that there are many modes of treating cancer, we can tailor-fit the treatments for patients because they, too, have dif- ferent reactions to each treatment,” Wong said.
According to MSD Philippines oncology medical adviser Dr. Ivy de Dios, biomarkers are important to identify the best approach for treating lung cancer and other malignancies among patients.
Although immunotherapy can stand alone as a treatment, it also works well with the combination of chemotherapy.
“Before, we were hesitant if immunotherapy could be logically paired with chemotherapy because of its inherent conflicting principles. But the way we see the results, we saw that the success rate in the combination of treatments is higher compared to either of them used alone,” Wong shared.
“Go get tested, especially if you are one of the high-risk persons by being a smoker or exposed to second-hand smoke. Filipinos should not dread knowing if they have the disease or not because there are now more options for combating lung cancer,” De Dios said.
The development of immunotherapy provides a new light in cancer treatment and new hope for a non-relapse of the disease, especially for lung cancer where the possibility of relapse is high.
With proper education among medical practitioners, Wong said that the treatment may not need specialized hospitals or an oncology center. A community hospital may be sufficient to perform immunotherapy.
The medical society is now on a journey toward a better array of treatments for cancer. Wong said they look forward to having cancer as an affliction similar to diabetes – a disease that can be controlled in the long term.