Traditional cancer treatments can be very effective, but these therapies can also have some very unforgiving drawbacks: Short-lived responses, long-lasting toxicities, and a lack of specific targeting of cancer cells and tissues.
Using the immune system’s potential to fight cancer can overthrow these limitations—and provide the specificity, duration, efficacy, and improved toxicity profile patients need.
After four rounds of chemotherapy, Victor Rigdon’s lung cancer wasn’t spreading—but his tumor wasn’t shrinking. That’s when his oncologist, Greg Durm, MD, recommended a new option: a recently approved immunotherapy drug called Tencentriq.
The drug blocks a protein on the surface of cancer cells—a checkpoint inhibitor—unmasking them and enabling immune cells to snuff them out. Drugs like this are becoming frontline therapies, and researchers at the Brown Center are investigating how well they work when paired with chemotherapy drugs.
Precision medicine and immunotherapy have been transformational in the outlook for many patients with lung cancer.
Nasser Hanna, MD — Tom and Julie Wood Family Foundation Professor of Lung Cancer Clinical Research
Kevin Gilmore was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2005, about a week after his one-year wedding anniversary. Myeloma is a cancer of the plasma cells that is treatable, but not curable.
Kevin has been in remission since 2006, and he’s hopeful that advances in immunotherapy will ensure that he’ll live to meet his grandchildren—and help other myeloma patients avoid the rigors of traditional treatments.
Donor support is crucial to advancing discoveries that will have the most meaningful impact on life-changing immunotherapies. You can help us make it happen.
Brown Center for Immunotherapy
980 W. Walnut St., Walther Hall
Indianapolis, IN 46202
Phone: (317) 278-6969
Email: iubrown@iu.edu
