Bone Cancer Treatments – Biotherapy / Immunotherapy

Biotherapy / Immunotherapy for Bone Cancer

The immune system is the body's own natural power of protection against infection and disease. At Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), we believe bone cancer treatment may be enhanced first by understanding, and then by using, the body's immune system.

Cancer may develop when the immune system ceases to work properly. Immunotherapy, also called biological therapy, biotherapy, or biological response modifier therapy, is designed to repair, stimulate, or enhance your own immune responses.

In treating bone cancer, biotherapy enlists the body’s immune system, either directly or indirectly, to fight the disease, or to lessen the side effects of other conventional bone cancer treatments.

Biotherapy/Immunotherapy may be used to:

• Stop, control, or suppress processes that enable bone cancer to grow
• Make cancer cells more recognizable to the immune system, and therefore more susceptible to destruction
• Boost your T-cells, NK-cells, macrophages, and other immune system cells' killing power
• Alter bone cancer cells' growth patterns to promote behavior similar to that of healthy cells
• Block or reverse the process that changes a normal cell or a pre-cancerous cell into a cancerous cell
• Enhance the body’s ability to repair or replace normal cells damaged or destroyed by other forms of bone cancer treatment (e.g., radiation therapy, chemotherapy)
• Prevent bone cancer cells from metastasizing (spreading to other parts of the body)

The experts at CTCA use immunotherapy treatments (e.g., interferons, colony stimulating factors) either alone or in conjunction with other bone cancer treatment modalities, such as surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy.

Next Topic:  Complementary Medicines for Bone Cancer