Immunotherapy Treatments Bring Hope To Cancer Patients
“Cancer has the phenomenal ability to cloak itself and hide from the immune system so it can grow and spread. Now we have, for various cancers, the ability to stimulate the immune system to attack cancer when chemotherapy drugs might not even work,” shares Dr. Geils. “The major progress we’ve seen is the benefit to patients due to the reduction of negative side effects when employing immunotherapy treatment where appropriate. We fully expect more advances to come.” In 2015, research showed the drugs ipilimumab and nivolumab stopped melanoma from advancing for nearly a year in 58% of cancer cases. Many other studies showing the promise of immunotherapy have been published since that time. As of 2020, 800 combination immunotherapy trials were going on in different indications. In addition to immunotherapy treatment, Charleston Oncology offers a myriad of clinical trials to patients, including immunotherapy trials.