Question: How does the treatment you use work?

Alex Haragan answered on 11 Jun 2018:

That’s a question I could spend all day answering, and still come to the conclusion “but we still don’t really know”!
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Broadly speaking, the drugs I am looking at get the immune system to fight cancer. We have known for a long time the immune system fights infections. But it also acts badly sometimes, and causes “auto-immune disorders” – which is where the immune system incorrectly identifies normal cells and kills them (like in type 1 diabetes or psoriasis).
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What this means is we know the immune system is capable of killing cells, but getting it to kill the right cells (in my case, lung cancer cells) is the harder part.
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Simply put – when the immune system is active and angry and trying to kill lung cancer, some cancers will express a specific protein that blocks the immune system. These treatments stop that protein from working – so the immune system can then kill the cancer cells.
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Understanding exactly when and why this works is what all my research is about!