The "three major therapies" for cancer treatment include surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, all of which have their limitations. Surgery is the most common, but its effects are limited. "Cell immunotherapy" is the fourth pillar of cancer treatment.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of surgical treatment?

It is more effective for the treatment of early cancers or cancers that are limited to the primary site, but for small cancers that are not visible to the naked eye or cancers that have spread throughout the body, it cannot be removed. If the cancer has metastasized, surgery is no longer the preferred treatment. In this case, if the surgery is still performed, there is a risk that the metastatic cancer cells will multiply sharply. In Japan, it is increasingly Many cases no longer choose surgery.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of radiation therapy?

Belongs to local therapy. The principle of action is to irradiate the lesion with radiation to damage the DNA of cancer cells, and to use the errors in DNA replication to induce apoptosis of cancer cells. Compared with surgical treatment, this treatment places a smaller burden on the patient, but it also has side effects if it is radiated to the surrounding normal cells. The high-precision irradiation method increases the irradiation of cancer cells while suppressing the irradiation to normal cells. However, even with this method, if zero radiation is to be achieved to normal cells, zero side effects are still difficult to achieve. If the cancer recurs, radiotherapy cannot perform radiotherapy on the same site beyond the permitted radiation dose.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of anticancer therapy?

It includes the use of a variety of treatment methods, such as chemotherapy agents, immunostimulants, hormonal agents, molecular targeting agents, and antibody drugs. Among them, chemotherapy uses drugs to enter the more actively dividing cancer cells, and uses its toxicity to kill cancer cells. But the treatment also affects normal cells and can cause side effects. In addition, during the treatment process, drug-resistant cancer cells may be generated, which affects the treatment effect; molecular targeting agents and antibody drugs do not have cytotoxicity, and they use the substances released by cancer cells as clues to combine with targeted cells. Immune cells target the drug, which binds to cancer cells, and then attacks the cancer cells, producing therapeutic effects. At present, various agents are only suitable for the treatment of specific cancers.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of immune cell therapy?

The idea behind immunotherapy is to inject the treated autologous or allogeneic immune cells into the patient through immune cell infusion, and induce the body's immune system, which usually attacks pathogens, to attack cancer cells. This method can improve the ability of the tumor patient's autoimmune system and destroy the tumor cells in the patient. Of course, cell therapy is also inadequate. For example, immunotherapy is generally considered, especially for detection point immunotargeting therapy. This monoclonal antibody is very expensive. In addition, if the target is not found and there is no strong targeting, the treatment is Very passive, any treatment plan can have side effects. The skin response and gastrointestinal response shown by different molecular targeted therapy drugs may be different. Immune cell therapy has been given high expectations and is hailed as the ultimate means of conquering tumors.