Last week, I had the opportunity to sit down with Rose house GRF Shiv and talk about Immunotherapy. Shiv is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, once done at Cornell, he plans to attend medical school and go on to become an oncologist. Shiv spends the majority of his time in the Immunotherapy and Cell Engineering lab on campus where he conducts an array of different research involving cancer cells and treatments.
Since he has such extensive knowledge of cancer, he was able to explain to us how it works and how immunotherapy could help. Though everyone knows what cancer is, only a small percentage can explain what it is and why it is so dangerous to our bodies. He was able to explain it in a way that made sense to everyone: imagine that all the cells in your body have blue shirts on. Normally, when a cell with a red shirt on comes in, all the blue shirts know that that’s an “outsider” and automatically build up defenses to get it out as soon as possible. However, with cancer, it’s not that evident. The cancer cells are only wearing a slightly tinted blue shirt which doesn’t raise such a red flag for the cells automatically to fight back on. Essentially, your own body tricks itself into not being able to tell the difference between a good and bad cell.
As we know, there has been extensive research into medical treatments and procedures that could be the cure for cancer. However, instead of looking elsewhere for treatment, Immunotherapy goes straight to the source of the problem: our bodies. Essentially, Immunotherapy boosts the defenses in our body to fight off cancer cells by using substances that our body already makes to restore immune function. Immunotherapy is still relatively new and extremely expensive, however, many scientists and doctors believe this is a large step in the right direction in cancer treatment.
I think that immunotherapy is an extremely interesting way to approach cancer. Over the summer, I worked in the immunology department in a pharmaceutical company. In my time there, I learned that understanding the immune system can be extremely beneficial. On one hand, cancer evades detection by the immune system but on the other hand, autoimmune diseases are caused by an overactive immune system. Perhaps immunotherapy can then not only be used to combat cancer but also help us understand how to create the opposite effect for autoimmune diseases.
I think that it’s really interesting that while we all know that cancer is a terrible disease, we don’t all necessarily know why. Fear of the unknown can be more terrifying than fear of the known, so I also think that it’s important to educate people about diseases so that the general public is not as afraid.
I attended this talk as well and I thought it was interesting to hear about the way immunotherapy is changing the way we take on cancer now. I also think its cool how Shiv is planning on going to med school after he finishes his PhD and is trying to actually go into cancer research as well as a physician. I think this also made the talk more interesting because he was so passionate about the topic. Finally, I love the way you described how the cancer cells infiltrate our bodies and what immunotherapy does to change that. It is super easy to understand!
This is a great summary of what seems like was a great event. As a undergraduate researcher who strives for graduate study in immunological therapeutics, I’m glad to see more people becoming aware to the fascinating topic this is!