A team of researchers meeting in Chicago are on their way of revealing what is believed to be a powerful new weapon in the fight against the gruesome cancer. Apparently, the disease can be beaten with the body’s own immune system, through a new drug combo.
Ipilimumab and Nivolumab are two presctiption treatments that help the immune system to fight cancer and stop it from advancing. Analysis and research has been made on a large number of patients suffering from melanoma, and improvements have been observed in 58% of the analyzed cases.
Cancer specialists are expanding their perspectives and increase their focus on the defective genes that drive the disease, thus shifting their emphasis from the organ in which takes root. This change of view seems to offer more relevant insights on the way cancer can be beaten.
Oncologists aim to understand the genetic substructures of cancer to be able to offer sufferers a better, more personalized and more effective treatments. However, this new approach is under the fatalities of both failure and success, underlining a very complex route to the final destination that should be defined by a cure for the disease.
For the moment, immunotherapy is considered to offer great hopes in the fight against cancer. The body’s immune system appears to be capable enough to stop the spread of the disease, as the virus now sees constant mutations and becomes more powerful in fighting against us.
Immunotherapy is nevertheless risky because it implies side effects that can easily suppress the benefits of the treatments. Particularly the types of drugs mentioned above, namely Ipilimumab and Nivolumab, come with great side effects, with approximately 36% of the patients who participated in the study analysis known to have stopped the treatment as a cause of side effects from the new treatment trial.
These side effects include inflammation of the stomach and bowel. In some cases this required hospitalization, which poses serious questions over the immunotherapy treatment. Surgery, however, along with chemotherapy and radiotherapy still remain vital and there’s no alternative yet developed for these classic ways of beating the disease.
The cancer issue has many problematic aspects apart from the treatments that run under constant tests and analysis. Now we can find several alternative medication on the market, all of which offers serious side effects along with good chances of improvement and recovery. However, the costs are almost impossible to bear, with costs rising up to $200.000 per patient, in US.
All in all it is simply great and promising that researchers and scientists are on a constant quest to conquer the disease. But a balance must be found, in regards to costs and results, for cancer treatments must be affordable for all sufferers in the world, not only the privileged that have all resources to pay the high price for health.
Image Source: etubics.com
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.