Immunotherapies are treatments that are designed to modulate the immune system and harness the power of the body’s own immune system to prevent, treat and even cure human disease. Immunotherapies can include biologic treatments, which refers to therapies that are derived from living organisms, and pharmaceutical drugs, which are chemicals synthesized in a lab. Many of the immunotherapies in use today were first developed using knowledge gained from basic immunologic studies focusing on the fundamental mechanisms controlling immune cell development, activation and suppression. Collaborations between the basic, translational and clinical researchers led to the development of immunotherapies that are currently used to treat conditions such as cancer, autoimmunity, allergy, infectious disease as well as numerous chronic inflammatory diseases.

Vaccines are immunotherapies that activate the immune system to make productive and lasting immune responses. Traditionally, vaccines have been used in infectious disease to provide immunity to viral and bacterial pathogens. However, more recent advances have resulted in vaccines that initiate immune responses to cancer cells. Other cancer immunotherapies include biologics (e.g. checkpoint inhibitors and cytokines) that help reactivate the immune system to kill cancer cells. Most recently, immune cells, isolated directly from individual cancer patients, are modified in the lab to make them highly effective killers of tumor cells and then transplanted back into the patient. This immune cell-based therapy (often called CAR-T therapy) has revolutionized treatment for lymphoma.

While vaccines and checkpoint inhibitors are examples of immunotherapies that activate the immune system, there are many immunotherapies that are designed to dampen immune responses. Allergy shots are immunotherapies that are used to re-train the immune system to ignore or tolerate innocuous allergens. Immunotherapies also include pharmaceutical drugs and biologics that suppress the activity of immune-induced inflammatory mediators. These anti-inflammatories are commonly used in treatment of autoimmune, allergic and chronic inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma and psoriasis. Immunotherapies are also designed to suppress or remove cells of the immune system that cause tissue damage. Cell depleting and cell suppressive immunotherapies are often given to transplant patients to prevent rejection of the transplanted organ and to autoimmune patients, including those with multiple sclerosis, to minimize immune-induced tissue damage. Going forward, the goal of researchers working on immunosuppressive therapies is to design treatments that that target the inflammatory disease without impacting immune responses to pathogens.

Learn more about UAB immunotherapy research here.