Vaccines & Vaccination

Cancer Vaccines and Immunotherapy

Immunotherapeutics is treatment that uses your body's own immune system to help fight cancer. Get information about the different types of immunotherapy and the types of cancer they are used to treat. The main types of immunotherapy now being used to treat cancer include:

1. Cancer vaccines
2. Monoclonal antibodies
3. Immune checkpoint inhibitors
4. Other, non-specific immunotherapies

Some types of immunotherapy are also sometimes called biologic therapy or biotherapy.

In the last few decades immunotherapy has become an important part of treating some types of cancer. Newer types of immune treatments are now being studied, and they’ll impact how we treat cancer in the future.

Immunotherapy includes treatments that work in different ways. Some boost the body’s immune system in a very general way. Others help train the immune system to attack cancer cells specifically. Immunotherapy works better for some types of cancer than for others. It’s used by itself for some of these cancers, but for others it seems to work better when used with other types of treatment.