Search Results for "Immunotherapy"

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) enhance immune response against foreign antigens, such as cancer, by manipulating checkpoints that have stopped the body from fighting them. In doing so, they also increase risk of the immune system attacking healthy cells and producing inflammatory side effects, resulting in immune-related adverse events (irAEs).

Since the first checkpoint inhibitor was approved in 2011, we have made tremendous leaps in immunotherapy in a short span of 10 years. Now we see immunotherapy combined with a variety of options, including chemotherapy or other oral and IV targeted therapy.

Care coordination, appropriate adverse event assessment and treatment, and rapid, continuous learning are essential priorities for oncology nurses to care for patients receiving immunotherapy, according to the experts who participated in ONS’s immunotherapy summit in March 2018. 

Altering a patient's gut microbiome through fecal transplant improved response to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in 40% of patients with advanced melanoma who initially did not respond to the immunotherapy in a small, single-arm clinical trial. Researchers reported the findings in Science.