Immunotherapy doesn’t work for everyone with cancer. So why do these groundbreaking treatments work for some people, but not for everyone? Dr. Vamsidhar Velcheti, the director of thoracic oncology at NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center, says that unfortunately, it’s still difficult to predict which patients will respond well to immunotherapy treatments.
THE PROMISE OF IMMUNOTHERAPY FOR CANCER TREATMENT
Read More “The ways cancer generally escapes the body’s immune system is by protecting itself by producing certain proteins,” said Dr. Velcheti. “PD-L1 is one of those proteins that actually helps protect the cancer from the body’s immune system. For patients that have high levels of PD-L1, you could potentially use a single-agent immunotherapy with good outcomes. The problem is that these proteins are constantly influx.”
Dr. Velcheti did say, however, that as doctors learn more and more about the biology of cancers, they will be able to incorporate what they learn into practice and hopefully, increase the effectiveness of immunotherapy.
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