Immunology

Immunotherapy: A Breakthrough in Fighting Against Cancer

Biomedical, Immunology, Uncategorized / By

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US. Similarly, the National Cancer Institute reports that approximately 38.9% of people will be diagnosed with cancer at least once in their lives. (2021) With such large numbers of people currently affected and set to be diagnosed with cancer in the future, there is a race against time to find plausible treatments to fight advancing cancer. Common treatments in today’s cancer aversion efforts include surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Recently, though, there has been a surge in immunotherapy. This promising form of cancer treatment has been shown to have multiple strategic advantages in combating this evolving disease. However, how did this therapy emerge, how is it used today, and what can we expect to find in the future?

Immunotherapy and Cancer:

To understand treatments against cancer, it’s important to first learn what this disease is. The National Cancer Institute coined cancer as “a disease in which some of the body’s cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other parts of the body.” (2025) In reality, cancer is so much more complex than its definition. The primary reason why cancer doesn’t have a “cure” and needs multiple types of treatments to suppress its evolution lies within its complex nature. It isn’t a disease that attacks from the outside; it’s a disease created through mutations and cell dysfunction. According to the Worldwide Cancer Research Organization, cancer arises from cell mutations and it varies differently on a genetic and molecular level for different people. (2025)

Cancer isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” disease; due to its inherently complex nature, different variations of cancer pose difficulty when attempting to find a “cure.”  One form of treatment, which has revolutionized cancer treatment for patients, is immunotherapy. Immunotherapy is a biologic therapy that uses and evokes the patient’s immune system to fight cancer. (UVA Health, n.d.) However, at a deeper level, immunotherapy operates the way cancer does. Similar to cancer, immunotherapy is a broad spectrum that doesn’t have a singular function. According to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, immunotherapy treatments work in a multitude of ways depending on the patient’s needs. (2025) One of its pathways is training the immune system to recognize and attack specifically cancer cells, since those cells often present themselves as harmless, which leads the immune system to initially restrict itself from attacking the cancer cells. (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute)

History of Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy has risen in popularity in recent decades as a tool to fight against cancer. However, the concept of immunotherapy to fight cancer has existed for centuries. According to Dobosz and Dzieciątkowski, as early as Ancient Egypt to the 19th century, scientists were able to observe a pattern: tumors would disappear when the patient was infected with high fevers. (2019) Such observations yielded a common consensus: when the immune system attacks an infection or fever, it also ends up eliminating cancer cells. William Coley, who was known as the father of immunotherapy, was one of the first to use these observations in an experiment by using the immune system to treat bone cancer in 1891. Through many case observations, he was able to understand that when a patient with an “incurable” cancer was infected with a bacterial infection, the patient went into spontaneous remission. (Dobosz & Dzieciątkowski, 2019) Furthermore, Coley took his research into an experimental direction by injecting various diseases directly into tumors, subsequently creating the first immunotherapy cancer treatment. Since then, interest in utilizing immunotherapy has skyrocketed, with multiple scientists exploring and experimenting with the potential benefits of using immunotherapy on difficult-to-treat cancers.

Current Usage of Immunotherapy

In recent years, immunotherapy hasn’t been used to fight all cancers; its potency lies in its unique approach in fighting specific cancer cells, thus potentially eradicating cancer. Common treatment options such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy eliminate cells in the general vicinity where the cancer is located. However, this poses a detrimental flaw; cancer can return since those types of treatment don’t directly target cancer cells. In recent decades, scientists have evolved immunotherapy as a form of treatment in which they “train” the immune system to identify and attack specific cancer cells, leading to the potential eradication of cancer. According to Zhang and Chen, oftentimes, cancer cells trick immune checkpoints by activating them, therefore signaling to the immune system that those cells are safe. (2018) Therefore, the current research standpoint is aimed at blocking these checkpoints so that the immune system can identify those cancer cells and attack. This process is made possible through engineered T cell therapy. (Zhang & Chen, 2018) Aside from checkpoint inhibitors, more common usage of immunotherapy is using “Monoclonal Antibodies” to help the immune system target and kill cancer cells and “Adoptive T Cell Therapy” (ACT) where T-cells (a type of immune cell) are genetically developed in a lab and reintroduced to kill cancer cells. (Zhang & Chen, 2018)

Conclusion

Cancer is an ever-evolving disease, one that we may never get rid of. Through medical advancements in treatments such as immunotherapy, we get one step closer to saving lives and preventing deaths. To fight this evolving disease, we must evolve our treatments to identify and fight cancer cells and tumors. Immunotherapy, a form of revolutionary therapy that was recognized for its ability to evolve and fight specific types of cancer cells, has the potential to do more. By pairing immunotherapy with medical innovations such as CRISPR and adoptive T-cell therapy, we can further our advancements and create faster and more effective cures for cancer.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2024). Leading Causes of Death, United States. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/womens-health/lcod/index.html

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (n.d.). Immunotherapy https://www.dana-farber.org/cancer-care/treatment/immuno-oncology/immunotherapy#:~:text=What%20is%20Immunotherapy?,is%20disabled%20in%20your%20browser

Dobosz, P., & Dzieciątkowski, T. (2019). The Intriguing History of Cancer Immunotherapy. Frontiers in immunology, 10, 2965. https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2019.02965

National Cancer Institute (2025). Cancer Statistics.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics

UVA Health (n.d.). Immunotherapy for Cancer Treatment. https://uvahealth.com/services/cancer/immunotherapy

Worldwide Cancer Research (2025). Why is cancer so hard to cure?

https://www.worldwidecancerresearch.org/cancer-and-cancer-research-explained/cancer-myths-and-questions/why-is-cancer-so-hard-to-cure/#:~:text=The%20complexity%20of%20the%20disease,cause%20the%20cells%20to%20change.

Zhang, H., & Chen, J. (2018). Current status and future directions of cancer immunotherapy. Journal of Cancer, 9(10), 1773–1781. https://doi.org/10.7150/jca.24577

Exploring the Science Behind Allergies

Bio Chemistry, Biomedical, Biotech, Engineering, Immunology, Science, Technology / By

As alarming as it sounds, even a lick of peanut butter could be life-threatening. Allergies. What is it? Let’s see. Had the peanut in peanut butter been harmful to everyone it wouldn’t be called an allergy. Only if something reacts in an unprecedented way to a select few is then called an allergy.

So the question arises, How do I know if I’m allergic and what I am allergic to?

Allergies come in forms, ranging from water to even nickel coins. One can’t possibly predict what substances react weirdly with your body without ever being exposed to it. This is why allergy tests are done.

Well, Only a medical professional could let you know your allergies unless something you had eaten or been exposed to previously didn’t sit right with you. Symptoms of an allergy range from a runny nose to breathlessness and of course, the scary and itchy hives. 

Let’s take a look at what the doctor is doing behind the scenes, shall we?

An immunologist or allergist usually does the test which involves a skin prick or a patch test. The image above, from Westhillsaaa, illustrates a medical personnel checking for unusual reactions in a patient’s skin through various triggers.

The tests could range from injecting the allergens into your skin from an injection to taking out a blood sample. The choice of tests varies according to the patient’s data including their medical history, their condition, and suspected triggers.

Something to note about allergies is that a person can outgrow them with time. This is commonly seen in children getting rid of food allergies but some allergies like that of pollen and medications persist for a long time or even all your life.

Although you can’t possibly get rid of an allergy that still persists in adulthood, you can take certain medications and tests described accordingly to reduce complications.

A common medication is desensitization which is basically building tolerance for your allergen by exposing your body to it periodically under small concentrations. 

A personal suggestion is that you should have an emergency action plan including an EpiPen ready just in case things go south after eating/reacting to something new.

In the near future, who’s to deny that at the rate medical technology is growing, maybe we could even have a permanent remedy for allergies? That’s a topic up for discussion.

Microplastics are everywhere — but are they dangerous?

Ecology, Immunology, Medicine, Science / By

Originally perceived as a marine issue, with oceanographers estimating a total of 15–51 trillion microplastic particles floating on surface waters worldwide, scientists have recently discovered that these tiny particles can contaminate rivers, soils and air. Furthermore, these minuscule particles have been found in a range of food, human stool, and even made their way into some of Earth’s most remote regions; including the poles, the equator, and even Mount Everest.

Plastics are a group of materials, either synthetic or naturally occurring; used in numerous applications in our daily life. They are the third most abundant material, after concrete and steel, and are used in countless sectors; ranging from medicine to transport.

Microplastics are microscopic fragments of plastic debris, that usually emerge from plastic litter due to sunlight exposure, which causes the material to degrade and weaken over time; they can also come from plastic items due to wear and tear. For instance, up to 1.5 million microfibres, a type of microplastic, can be released per kilogram of clothing during a wash. Remarkably, even opening a plastic bottle can create thousands of microplastics. One may ask, are humans ingesting these minute particles?

The short answer is: yes, with the discovery of microplastics found in stool verifying this question. As of today, microplastics have been found in foods and drinks, mainly bottled and tap water, salt, dust, and more. According to a study conducted in Queensland, researchers studied samples of rice from different countries around the world, detecting microplastics in every sample; whether the rice was grown in Thailand, India, Pakistan, or Australia, and packaged in plastic or paper. In an interview, Dr Jake O’Brien, a lead author for Environmental Health Sciences, states “Washing the rice reduced the amount of plastic likely to be ingested. But the study used special filtered water for rinsing, and most households only have access to tap water; which contains microplastics.”

There currently isn’t enough evidence to say that microplastics are harmful, as the topic is relatively new. A lack of information and research surrounding the phenomenon is scarce, as scientists aim to establish an evidence base. Prof Ian Musgrave, a toxicologist at the University of Adelaide, expresses “Knowing if microplastics are harmful to humans is hard to untangle when we are exposed to so many other substances. While we are consuming things that have tiny amounts of microplastics, we don’t absorb them. But because we can’t demonstrate damage, that’s not a reason to be casual.” Additionally, this explains why multiple studies on the ingestion of microplastics by marine animals, can’t completely isolate the impact microplastics have against all the other pollution and pressure they are exposed to in the environment, as it’s difficult to perform.

Likewise, there are emerging studies on the effects of ingesting high levels of microplastics in rats and mice, concluding that high levels of microplastic accumulation can affect reproduction. Nevertheless, it is more likely that the smaller the particles the greater the potential to cause harm, as smaller specks have an easier chance of entering cells or tissues; however, quantifying these issues and understanding where they come from is a challenge.

While the debate is still ongoing as to whether microplastic could cause harm, you may still wish to limit your exposure. To limit your exposure, you can drink filtered tap water, and choose natural-based products over plastic for yourself and your environment will help reduce microplastic exposure. Overall, minimising microplastic exposure globally requires a substantial effort to limit the release of plastics, and microplastics, to the environment. Reducing plastic waste, washing your clothes less often, and bringing your own bag whilst shopping; all can contribute to limiting plastic release and even production; thus decreasing microplastic exposure.

Whatever the solution, it’s important that it’s better for both the planet and people.