Possibility of an Increase in Immunotherapy Effectiveness?

Immunotherapy can lead to long-lasting remission, but most people don’t benefit from this type of therapy and it does not always work. One way this type of therapy works is by stimulating the immune system to create T cells that go into tumors to kill the diseased cells. However, the environment within a tumor is inhospitable for these T cells which causes many of them to die before they can complete their job. Newly funded research in the University of Houston seeks to create immune cells that can survive in these bad environments. This research can ultimately increase the number of people who can benefit from immunotherapy and, as Navin Varadarajan stated, “Engineering T cells to work more broadly could be another way to increase the therapy’s effectiveness.”