Category Archives: Immunotherapy

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research, Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy Expected to Steal Spotlight at Cancer Confab

Immunotherapy Stealing The Spotlight
Immunotherapy Stealing The Spotlight

Immunotherapy is expected to steal the spotlight when the world’s leading cancer doctors convene in Chicago in June for a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. At center stage will be new biotech drugs designed to help the body’s immune system fight cancer. Under development by global pharmaceutical giants Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Roche, the new designer drugs enhance the ability of immune system T cells to target and attack cancer.

In previous studies, T cell therapies have produced promising results when used to combat several types of advanced cancer, including melanoma, lung and kidney cancers. New studies showing similarly promising results for advanced bladder and head and neck cancers will be presented at the conference.

T Cells: Natural Cancer Fighters

The cancer community’s interest in T cells and immunotherapy cancer treatments is two-fold:

  1. There is tremendous need to find cancer treatment solutions for advanced cancers that have proven resistant to standard Western cancer treatments.
  2. The new T cell therapies have produced only mild side effects, offering a healthier option to the often debilitating side effects associated with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

Immunotherapy “should represent a major advance in cancer therapy and patient survivability. Wall Street is increasingly recognizing the multibillion-dollar potential for cancer immunotherapies,” Len Yaffe of StockDoc Partners told Reuters.

While it is heartening to see Big Pharma finally embracing immunotherapy, we find it somewhat disturbing that Western medicine continues to value drug protocols over natural, non-toxic immunotherapy. Visit our website to find out about Issels’ non-toxic T cell cancer vaccines and our holistic approach to immunotherapy.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Immunotherapy

Your Body Knows Best: Why Immunotherapy Works

Your Body Knows Best
Your Body Knows Best

Last year Science magazine hailed immunotherapy as the medical “Breakthrough of the Year.” After decades spent trying to cut cancer out, poison it with chemicals and bombard it with radiation, cancer researchers are discovering that your body knows best! Increasingly, practitioners of Western medicine are joining Issels’ experts in integrative immunotherapy in recognizing the power of the body’s immune system to fight cancer and heal itself.

Integrative Immunotherapy

Today, immunotherapy is being used successfully as both a primary cancer treatment and in conjunction with traditional Western treatments. When used as a primary treatment, integrative immunotherapy offers cancer patients an improved quality of life both during and after treatment. When combined with traditional treatments such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy has been found to decrease the length of treatment and reduce toxic side effects.

For cancer patients, including integrated immunotherapy in their cancer treatment plan is a win-win scenario. Immunotherapy boosts the body’s natural defense system which helps your body fight cancer. But it also improves immune system strength and health, giving your body the resources it needs to keep cancer from coming back.

60+ Years of Experience

Issels Oncology Centers have more than 60 years experience using integrative immunotherapy to treat cancer. Our methods have produced a unique history of complete, long-term remission of advanced Stage 4 cancers and cancers that have proven resistant to standard cancer treatments. We offer a wide range of alternative cancer treatments, cancer vaccines, and advanced targeted therapies at our cancer medical centers.

Visit our website to find out more about integrative immunotherapy and why we think your body knows best when it comes to fighting cancer.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research, Immunotherapy

Interesting New Cancer Treatments

Build Up Your Immune System
Build Up Your Immune System

Cancer treatment is in a state of flux. The three cancer treatments – surgery, chemotherapy and radiation — that have dominated Western medicine for decades are finding much needed competition in interesting new cancer treatments. Recent genetic and cellular research has resulted in discoveries that are broadening our understanding of cancer and how cancer cells interact with the body’s immune system.

These fascinating revelations are refocusing our approach to cancer treatment as traditionalists begin to recognize the benefits of integrative medicine and immunotherapy in treating cancer.

Among the more interesting new treatment approaches are:

  • Strengthening immune response. Genome sequencing is being used to identify immune system cells that attack specific mutations in malignant cells. In a recent trial, billions of immune system cells were replicated in the laboratory and infused into the patient’s bloodstream. According to a New York Times article, the patient’s tumors began “melting away.”
  • Combining alternative and conventional treatments. Increasingly, alternative cancer therapies are being used hand-in-hand with conventional cancer treatments as oncologists recognize the value of taking an integrative approach to treating cancer. By combining immunotherapy with conventional treatment, patients are experiencing better outcomes with fewer problematic side effects.
  • Targeting cell processes. Advanced targeted therapies are being used to manipulate specific cell processes, allowing immune system cells to more effectively and efficiently attack cancer cells. Researchers are also experimenting with genetically reprogramming cells. While promising, early trials have also proven dangerous for the patients, as a recent Forbes article indicates.

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Alternative Cancer Treatment, Immunotherapy

Integrative Immunotherapy: Cancer Treatment that Improves Quality of Life

Relax
Relax

Cancer treatment and quality of life often generally considered mutually exclusive terms. When surgery, chemotherapy and radiation are the only options, cancer patients often find the “cure” to be as painful and damaging to their well-being as — and sometimes worse — than the disease.

If the lessons of history hold true, today’s standard cancer treatments will someday be considered barbaric. Even if cancer is not completely preventable in the future, it is likely that surgery, chemotherapy and radiation will be replaced by kinder, gentler, more effective cancer treatments that do not rely on destroying the body to heal it. We are already heading in that direction.

Immunotherapy: Natural Defense

Integrative immunotherapy, which has formed the basis of Issels’ holistic cancer treatments for more than 60 years, has allowed many cancer patients to treat their cancer and enjoy a better quality of life. Issels’ unique record of complete and long-term remission of advanced cancers and cancers that had proven resistant to the standard cancer treatments favored by practitioners of Western medicine demonstrates that cancer can be successfully fought by tapping into the body’s own natural defense mechanism – our immune system.

Emphasis On Quality of Life

Increasingly, Western cancer researchers are coming to the same conclusions that have driven Issels’ alternative cancer therapies for decades:

  • They have begun to recognize the power of the body’s immune system to fight cancer without causing patients additional harm.
  • They have begun to realize that fighting cancer requires an integrative approach that attacks cancer on multiple levels.
  • They are beginning to understand that cancer patients want and deserve to enjoy a high quality of life both during and after treatment.

At Issels alternative cancer treatment centers, you do not have to choose between treatment and quality of life – we offer both!

Cancer Research, Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy the Cancer Protocol for the Future

Immunotherapy is Being Recognized
Immunotherapy is Being Recognized

It’s not exactly a new procedure – researchers have been working on immunotherapy for decades in the fight against certain types and stages of cancer – but the protocol is getting renewed interest in the light of clinical trials and new treatments that show promise; cancer immunotherapy was even named Science magazine’s 2013 “Breakthrough of the Year.”

In the past, immunotherapy has shown uneven or unremarkable results. “But as the sophistication of our understanding of immunology increased,” Charles Link of New Link Genetics told MIT Technology Review, “new strategies evolved to attack the disease, and those strategies are turning out to work in the clinic.”

Today’s immunotherapy uses the body’s own immune system – the “T-cells” – to target and attack malignant cancer cells. When used in conjunction with chemotherapy, immunotherapy may serve to shorten and lighten the chemo treatment, which can dramatically reduce the unpleasant side effects and toxic complications of the powerful  toxins.

A handful of major pharmaceutical companies have immunotherapy protocols in tests. In one early-stage trial of melanoma patients, half of those receiving high-dose immunotherapy had tumors shrink or disappear, and a year later the majority of those patients were still alive – a notable result, as late-stage melanoma survival rates are typically low.

T-cell protocols are just one of the new wave of cancer treatments that are making headlines. A form of cellular therapy, for example, trains a patient’s own immune cells to better recognize cancer cells, after which these powerful fighters are infused back into the patient. One pharma company is developing virus-based gene therapies that, according to MIT Technology Review, “selectively kill cancer cells while simultaneously making the cells better targets for the immune system.”

Immunotherapy, News

Immunotherapy in the News

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Immunotherapy in the News
Immunotherapy in the News

The longstanding treatment for cancer – which typically involves some combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation – is no longer the only treatment.

Over the past decade, new therapies including hormone therapy, molecularly targeted therapy and now, T-cell therapy, are exciting researchers and catching attention from the public.

In the news recently on April 2014, professor and researcher Dr. Catherine Bollard of Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine stated that immunotherapy shows promise in treating the disease. “T-cell therapies are becoming the next wave of the future for cancer therapy,” Dr. Bollard is quoted in AuburnPub.

Immunotherapy involves triggering one’s own immune system to combat malignant cancer cells, and providing support to the system. The immune system’s cells – referred to as “T-cells” – are harvested by doctors who then use man-made proteins to “train” the cells to identify and destroy cancer cells without harming other systems in the body.

Though widely effective, chemotherapy has well-known side effects – from nausea to hair loss, fatigue and pain – which happens because the chemo’s powerful toxins attack healthy cells as well as malignant ones.

When used along with traditional treatment, T-cell therapy can reduce the amount of chemotherapy and radiation needed at early cancer stages. This could help the body recover more quickly and offer patients fewer unpleasant  complications. More importantly, the immunotherapy could aid in preventing relapse later one. “The benefit,” says Dr. Bollard, “is that [the T-cells] can go places where the drug therapy can’t, so it can go to parts of the body that would not normally be reached by drug therapy.”

T-cells are still undergoing clinical trials, but experts like Dr. Bollard believe they have the potential to become a standard therapy.

At Issels we have been using our immunobiologic core treatment to boost the body’s immune system with powerful and positive results for patients. We invite you to find out more about our programs.