A Step on the Way to Harmless Immunotherapies Significant advances have been made in cancer therapy over the previous decade, and several new methods are now available to physicians. Among these are a number of therapies that activate the body’s immune system against cancer cells, including a treatment known as immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy. The downside of this form of cancer treatment is that, like other modern cancer therapies, it is often accompanied by serious adverse reactions that can affect various organs. The heart is often damaged and affected in such a way that even the death of the patient is not excluded.
Dr Lars Michel is a resident physician (Department of Cardiology and Angiology at Essen University Hospital) and a researcher at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Duisburg-Essen. © Essen University Hospital
The research results of a team led by Prof
anti-PD1 immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy
Dr Tienush Rassaf at the Angiology and
in January 2022.
Cardiology Clinic at the Essen University Hospital and scientists at ISAS provide initial insights into the changes underlying cardiac damage as an adverse reaction of immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy at the cellular and biochemical levels – and how it might be avoided. More than 20 scientists from various institutes and facilities in Germany and abroad are involved in the translational research project. The results from 2021 appeared in the prestigious European Heart Journal under the title Targeting early stages of cardiotoxicity from
Biomarkers
T lymphocytes or T cells play a central role in immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy. Like B lymphocytes, they are important actors in the immune system. T cells move through the body, seeking out cells with pathologically altered cell membranes, for example after a viral infection. Depending on the type of T cell, it can destroy the altered body cell directly, sound the alarm via soluble messenger substances such as cytokines, or request reinforcement, so to speak, in the form of additional immune cells.
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