Using the immune system to treat cancer

Each year 14 million people worldwide (one person every 4 seconds) is diagnosed with cancer. Currently men have a 1/2 chance and women a 1/3 chance of being diagnosed with cancer within their lifetime. With an ageing population, deaths from cancer are predicted to double worldwide by 2030. This sobering prospect requires an ever greater need to develop new treatments to better target cancer and understand the basic biology that underpins what is actually more than 200 distinct types of cancer. That is the bad news! The good news is that novel approaches to treating and understanding cancer are being developed every day. We have spent a number of years being intrigued by the prospect of developing an immune-based therapy to treat cancer.

So why is our research team interested in cancer immunotherapy particularly? Simply put, conventional treatments for cancer are pretty toxic. They typically involve either surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy or some combination approach. There are often numerous and potent side effects because whilst most drugs or radiation kill cancer cells, they do not spare our healthy cells. Immunotherapy has the potential to be powerful by attacking the cancer throughout the body wherever it may hide. It is specific because we can train the immune system to seek out and destroy only cancer cells avoiding collateral damage. It can provide long lasting memory, which would lead to continued protection, and this approach may provide a Universal approach that could be applied across a range of different cancers.

Immunotherapy has long represented the Cinderella of cancer treatment strategies, but remarkable recent successes in the clinic have now thrust immunotherapy back into the limelight. The aim now, is to capitalise on these recent successes to reduce the burden of cancer, improving the health and wellbeing of the population.

For further information please contact Dr Machado or see our research interests page