Immunotherapy is often called the most promising direction in cancer treatment. The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine this year is awarded for work in this direction.
The winners of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 2018 become the American James Ellison, and Japanese, Tasuku Honjo. It is reported that the scientists received the world’s most prestigious award for fundamental work in the field of immunotherapy. Allison examined the proteins, which when activated, the immune system begins to attack malignant tumors. Together with his Japanese counterpart, he laid the foundations of developing drugs against malignant melanoma and some other tumors.
According to a number scientists, immunotherapy is the most promising direction in the fight against tumors. If the radiotherapy is concentrated on the irradiation of malignant tumors to radiation and chemotherapy exposes the body effects of toxic drug, and all accompanied by numerous serious side effects are sometimes unbearable, immunotherapy uses a fundamentally different approach. She teaches the human immune system to detect, find and destroy tumors, which makes such severe side effects. It has been proved that, theoretically, immunotherapy is effective in most tumors, which are considered incurable.
In different countries of the world hundreds of teams of scientists are working on new methods of immunotherapy. Every year the market of all new drugs based on monoclonal antibodies that are designed to fight against severe types of cancer. These drugs often prolong life in patients, to whom more recently doctors hopelessly shrugged, and some drugs lead to surprising cases of remission. (READ MORE)