Immune Function

It may be possible to use the human body's own natural defenses in the treatment of various cancers. One promising strategy at present involves training a patient's immune system to recognize cancerous cells as a pathogen or foreign body to be attacked as with any viral or bacterial infection.1 Before delving into this topic, it may be helpful to understand how the immune system functions.

Our immune system has three layers of defense. The first layer is a simple physical barrier against the entry of germs - our skin. Should a pathogen - a virus or bacterial infection - get past this initial barrier, the innate immune system goes into action with a "non-specific" response. This means that the body makes antibodies, blood cells that, at this point in the pathogen invasion, act as a type of generic "cure-all" that fights a wide range of pathogens, but does not target any one specifically.2 If the innate immune system is working hard, a person often develops fever and inflammation. The last line of the body's defense is the adaptive immune system. As the name suggests, these antibody cells literally "adapt to win" - they seek out specific weaknesses in the invading pathogens in order to destroy them.

The challenge for oncology (cancer) researchers in applying immunological techniques lies in the very nature of cancer cells. These are essentially "normal" body cells that start to grow in an abnormal, uncontrolled way. They are literally created from a person's own tissues. Therefore, to the immune system, they do not appear as "foreign" bodies or pathogens. Antigens - molecules that trigger an immune response - are not recognized as such.3 If we can teach the immune system to recognize cancerous cells as pathogens, however, we would have access to immunological tools that would be of great use in fighting cancer.

'Immune Function' Sources:
  1. Meadows, Michelle. "Cancer Vaccines: Training the Immune System to Fight Cancer," FDA Consumer, September/October 2004.
  2. Alberts, Bruce, et. al. Molecular Biology of the Cell(4th ed.), Part V, Section 24.
  3. Meadows, op. cit.




 

 

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