(Ben Ragen/ The New York Academy of Sciences) — Cancer immunotherapies utilize an individual’s immune system to fight off or even prevent cancers— shifting the paradigm for cancer treatment and providing alternatives to toxic chemotherapies.
Since the first immunotherapy cancer treatment was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in the mid-1980s, scientists have continued to explore the potential of drugs and other biomedical technologies to manipulate cytokines, neoantigens, immune cells, and stem cells to treat and even vaccinate against cancer.
Irving Weissman, MD, is a Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Professor of Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research at Stanford University and the Director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. He has been studying cancer since 1957 and is a leader in the field of stem cell biology. (…)