What is biological therapy?
Biological therapy is a cancer treatment that utilizes the body’s immune system in order to destroy cancer cells.
As such, biological therapy involves the use of substances or organisms from our body or similar artificial versions.
In addition to therapy that stimulates the immune system, there are other biological therapies such as antibody therapy.
Biological therapy is used to treat numerous types of cancer, as well as to slow down tumor growth and prevent its possible spread.
There are several types of biological therapy:
- Biochemotherapy
- Cancer vaccines
- Adoptive cell transfer Angiogenesis inhibitors
- Cytokine therapy
- Immune checkpoint modulator
- Monoclonal antibodies
- Targeted therapy
- Oncolytic virus treatments
Why is biological therapy performed?
Biological therapy is used to prevent tumor growth in some cases of cancer. Along the same lines, this therapy is also used to prevent the tumor from spreading to other organs or structures.
It is still a treatment in the middle of research, so some of the biological therapy options may only be available in clinical trials.
What does biological therapy consist of?
Biological therapy is aimed at getting the immune system to detect and try to eliminate cancer cells. The immune system has the ability to fight germs throughout the body, and the immune system should recognize cancer cells as abnormal cells, although this is not the case, as cancer cells can camouflage themselves or even deactivate or inhibit the immune system so that it does not act.
Biological therapy usually works like this:
- In the first instance, it induces the immune system to attack the cancer cells. In that case, there are several options for biologic therapy treatments to achieve their goals.
- Secondly, biologic therapy can also make it easier for the immune system to recognize cancer cells.
Preparing for biologic therapy
As such, treatment with targeted biologic therapy for cancer does not require prior preparation.
Care after biological therapy
No special care is necessary after undergoing biological therapy treatment. However, the possibility of possible side effects should be mentioned.
Signs and symptoms such as pain, inflammation, irritation, a rash at the injection site… are quite common. They can even cause the appearance of stronger symptoms, such as influenza accompanied by fever, chills, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, headache…
Alternatives to biological therapy
At the moment, biological therapy is a treatment under investigation, and today several fields have been detected in which the efficacy of this therapy could be improved. These include:
- Ways to overcome resistance to cancer immunotherapy.
- Identification of biomarkers that predict response to immunotherapy.
- Identification of novel cancer-associated antigens, i.e., neoantigens.
- Non-invasive strategies to isolate immune cells.
- Understanding the mechanisms of why cancer cells manage to avoid the immune response against cancer.
- Near-infrared photoimmunotherapy.