Chemotherapy and Immunotherapy

Tanner Cancer Care uses many tools for treating cancer. If you’ve been diagnosed with cancer, your treatment plan may include chemotherapy treatment — often just called “chemo” — or immunotherapy, a relatively new approach to cancer treatment.

Chemotherapy may be used alone or — most often — with other treatments such as surgery or radiation therapy. This treatment helps shrink your tumor before surgery to remove it or kill any undetected tumor cells that may remain after surgery.

Immunotherapy uses different medications to activate your body’s own immune response, literally turning your body against your cancer. Many immunotherapy medications are still in development, but show promise in treating cancer with fewer side effects than chemotherapy. Access to clinical trials like those we offer ensures you have the earliest access to the most advanced treatments available.

We are proud to offer chemotherapy and immunotherapy services and treatment for blood disorders in partnership with the medical oncology specialists at Northwest Georgia Oncology Centers.

Types of chemotherapy treatment

There are more than 100 types of chemotherapy drugs. Your doctor may prescribe more than one drug at a time or different drugs over time. Your specific treatment will depend on:

• The type of cancer you have
• How advanced it is(what stage)
• Whether you’ve had chemotherapy before
• Your overall physical health

How chemotherapy works

Chemotherapy works by killing fast-growing cells, such as those in your tumor. Your doctor may use chemotherapy drugs to:

• Cure your cancer
• Reduce the risk it will return
• Shrink tumors that are causing symptoms, such as pain

Chemotherapy is a systemic treatment, affecting your whole body — not just the tumor. It also affects healthy cells and can cause side effects. The most common side effect of chemotherapy treatment is fatigue.

How immunotherapy works

Your immune system is already hard at work ridding your body of abnormal cells, along with protecting you from infections and helping you heal.

Immunotherapy harnesses your immune system, teaching it to destroy the specific abnormal cells that are the basis of your cancer. Immunotherapy has shown tremendous promise in slowing and even stopping cancer growth.

Types of immunotherapy treatments

As with chemotherapy, there are several types of immunotherapy treatments. Your doctor may prescribe:

• Immune checkpoint inhibitors – This treatment inhibits — or reduces — the natural checkpoints on your immune system, allowing your immune system to respond more aggressively to your cancer.
• Immune system modulators – This treatment reinforces your immune response against cancer, sometimes enhancing specific parts of your immune system or otherwise affecting your immune system at large.
• Monoclonal antibodies – Produced in a lab, these are immune system proteins that bind to specific parts of a cancer cell. Also called therapeutic antibodies, these can either inhibit the cells from reproducing or “mark” them for your immune system to target them more effectively.
• Treatment vaccines – Just as traditional vaccines are designed to trigger an immune response, so treatment vaccines prepare your immune system to attack cancer cells.
• T-cell transfer therapy – T cells are part of your immune system that attack diseases. With T-cell transfer therapy — also called adoptive cell therapy or adoptive immunotherapy — doctors remove T cells from your tumor, identify the ones that are most aggressive in fighting your cancer, manufacture more of those specific cells and infuse them back into your body.

New types and approaches to immunotherapy are constantly in development. The experienced, board-certified medical oncologists at Tanner Cancer Care remain focused on the research and these medication’s potential to improve your outcome.

Managing the side effects of cancer treatment

Helping you manage treatment-related side effects is part of your overall cancer care at Tanner, so tell your healthcare team about any side effects that you experience during your treatment.

As part of a regional health system, we can offer the support of a range of specialists and other medical experts who can discuss these side effects and ways to alleviate them.

Learn More

• Find a cancer care specialist.
• Learn about radiation therapy.