Ethan Sun
Phillips Academy, 180 Main St, Andover, MA, USA.
*Corresponding author: Ethan Sun
Abstract
Immunotherapy is a field of cancer treatment which uses the body’s built-in defense system as a means of killing diseased cells. Cancers foster an immunosupressive tumor microenvironment in order to evade detection, a state that immunotherapy seeks to rectify. Nanotechnology pairs well with this goal, especially in its ability to mimic or borrow from the body’s endogenous mechanisms to develop effective drugs and delivery systems. Nanomedicine builds upon existing immunotherapy techniques, which have in the past experienced issues in the proportion of patients that respond to treatment and the systemic toxicity that follows from their off-target effects. This review surveys existing applications of nanotechnology to major branches of immunotherapy, elucidating their advantages and providing examples of novel platforms that enhance antitumor effects. The term cancer describes a broad range of diseases in which normal regulation of cell growth and division is disrupted, producing a population of cancerous cells that proliferate uncontrollably. Cancer cells often display error-prone replication and DNA repair mechanisms, evolving rapidly as a result. Advantageous mutations allow cancer to adapt around the body’s defense mechanisms, making the disease especially hard to cure [1]. Indeed, cancer claimed an estimated 9.9 million lives in the year 2020 alone [2].
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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02525-9.
How to cite this paper
Cancer Immunotherapeutics at the Nanoscale
How to cite this paper: Ethan Sun. (2022) Cancer Immunotherapeutics at the Nanoscale. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Medicine Research, 6(4), 438-445.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/ijcemr.2022.10.020