Beyond Chemotherapy: How Immunotherapy and Targeted Therapies Are Transforming Cancer Care

For decades, chemotherapy has been one of our most powerful tools against cancer. It remains an essential treatment today, helping millions of people fight many different types of the disease.

But it’s no longer the only tool we have.

At Cancer Care Institute, Youram Nassir, MD, uses advances in cancer science to create highly individualized treatment plans. Today, we can learn much more about what drives certain cancers and use that information to choose therapies designed to attack them in entirely different ways.

Two of the most exciting advances, immunotherapy and targeted therapy, are helping transform how we think about cancer treatment.

Chemotherapy attacks rapidly growing cells

To understand what makes newer treatments different, it helps to start with chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy uses powerful medications to destroy rapidly dividing cancer cells or stop them from growing. Because cancer cells tend to divide quickly, chemotherapy can work against many different cancers and reach cancer cells throughout the body.

However, some healthy cells also divide rapidly. Chemotherapy may affect those cells as well, which helps explain familiar side effects such as hair loss, nausea, fatigue, and changes in blood counts.

Today, we often use chemotherapy alongside newer treatments rather than viewing them as competing approaches.

Immunotherapy recruits your immune system

Your immune system constantly searches for threats, including abnormal cells. Cancer, however, can be remarkably good at hiding.

Some cancer cells develop ways to evade or suppress the immune response, essentially preventing your body’s defenses from recognizing them as a threat.

Immunotherapy works by helping your immune system recognize and fight cancer more effectively. Different forms of immunotherapy accomplish this in different ways. For example, checkpoint inhibitors can remove some of the “brakes” that prevent immune cells from attacking cancer.

This approach has changed treatment for several cancers, including certain melanomas and cancers of the lung, kidney, bladder, and other organs.

One particularly exciting difference is the potential for lasting responses in some patients. Because immunotherapy engages the immune system rather than attacking cancer cells directly, the immune response may sometimes continue even after treatment ends.

Targeted therapy goes after cancer’s vulnerabilities

Targeted therapy takes another approach.

Cancer cells often contain specific genetic mutations, proteins, or other biological characteristics that help them grow and survive. Targeted therapies identify and interfere with those specific vulnerabilities.

Think of chemotherapy as casting a wide net, while targeted therapy aims at a particular weakness in the cancer.

That precision may allow us to attack cancer cells while limiting effects on some healthy cells. However, targeted treatments can still cause side effects, and they only work when a cancer has a target that a particular drug can address.

That’s why testing the tumor for biomarkers may play such an important role in treatment planning.

Which treatment is better?

There isn’t a simple answer, because the best treatment is the one that fits your cancer.

Two people with cancer in the same organ may receive very different treatment plans. One person’s tumor may have a genetic alteration that responds to targeted therapy. Another may have biomarkers suggesting immunotherapy could be effective. A third may benefit most from chemotherapy or a combination of treatments.

Your treatment may also change over time depending on how your cancer responds.

This ability to make treatment decisions based on the individual characteristics of both the cancer and the patient represents one of the biggest shifts in modern oncology.

More options mean more personalized care

At Cancer Care Institute, we don’t simply treat cancer. We treat the person who has it. Dr. Nassir considers your type and stage of cancer, tumor characteristics, overall health, previous treatments, goals, and other individual factors when developing your care plan.

Depending on your needs, that plan may include chemotherapy, immunotherapy, targeted therapy, or a carefully selected combination of treatments.

Cancer treatment continues to evolve, and every discovery gives us another opportunity to treat the disease more intelligently and precisely.

If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with cancer, schedule a consultation with Cancer Care Institute in Los Angeles. Dr. Nassir can help you understand your treatment options and create a personalized plan built around your cancer, your health, and you.