Natural Revolution

The decades-old hope of using the body's natural defenses against a disease such as cancer is becoming a reality today.

Every stunning — though rare — breakthrough, every story of personal triumph heralds a coming revolution in cancer care. Immunotherapy holds the promise of delivering safe and potent cancer treatments that are less toxic to patients. Researchers envision future strategies that will reverse the tumor process once it has started and still earlier strategies that could keep people from ever becoming cancer patients.

The goal of immunotherapy is to work with the body.

In the presence of cancer that means jamming or stripping away the tumor's chemical defenses that subvert the immune system while boosting a healthy immune response.

It means developing vaccines that will rally the immune system to fight an existing tumor and traditional preventative vaccines that would repair defective cells before they turn cancerous.

However, there are many questions that must be answered before such therapies are generally available. Years of study and clinical trials lie ahead before those answers can be found.

The MCG Cancer Center researchers are seeking answers, working collaborately with other scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Their published results and data are used by still other investigators in their own laboratories to spur understanding of the immune system.

Immunologists at The MCG Cancer Center focus on molecular mechanisms or interactions that result in immune suppression, such as the effect of the enzyme indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO). An IDO-inhibitor is already in use in clinical trials. MCG researchers are also packing tumor antigens in viral vectors to trigger an immune response in animal models. In the future, such work may lead to immune-booster vaccines that will improve patient outcomes.

Learn more about the researchers in immunology and immunotherapy. 

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