Immunotherapy actually works

Genotype is tumor analysis coupled with clinical trial literature search, which tries to match therapies to patient-specific biomarker information to generate a treatment approach. In other words, information that may help when considering "potential" treatment options (theoretical analysis).

Phenotype "actually" measures the response of the tumor cells to drug exposure. Following this exposure, it measures both cell metabolism and cell morphology. The integrated effect of the drugs on the whole cell, resulting in a cellular response to the drug, measuring the interaction of the entire genome.

Then endpoints (point of termination) of genotyping analysis are gene expression, examining a single process (pathway) within the cell or a relatively small number of processes (pathways) to test for "theoretical" candidates for targeted therapy.

The endpoints of phenotyping analysis are expression of cell-death, both tumor cell death and tumor associated endothelial (capillary) cell death (tumor and vascular death), and examines not only for the presence of the molecular profile but also for their functionality, for their interaction with other genes, proteins and other processes occuring within the cell, and for their "actual" response to targeted therapy (not theoretical susceptibility).

Again, the choice is theoretical vs actual analysis.

Manipulating the body's immune system has proven to be the most powerful way to cure advanced cancer that cannot be cured by surgery, radiation and conventional chemotherapy treatments. Researchers now know how cancer cells die matters and if they can manipulate that death in a way that primes the body to destroy any cancer that returns will vastly improve cancer care.

The concept of using the immune system against cancer dates back to the 1890s when Dr. William Coley, a New York surgeon, noted that some patients who got infections after cancer surgery fared better. He surmised that the immune response triggered by the infection was also working to eradicate cancer. The idea of cancer immunotherapy has been around really for at least 100 years.

And even here, there appears to be near universal agreement that to achieve optimal benefit, immunotherapies should be combined with targeted cancer drugs or other immunotherapies in a multi-pronged attack.

The body's immune system is constantly trying to keep tumors from forming or coming back. If you can give the immune system a boost in terms of helping out with that long-term surveillance, it could make more sense biologically.

So, the consistent and specific cure or control of cancer will require multiple drugs administered in combination targeted to abnormal patterns of normal cellular machinery that effect or reflect malignant behavior. It is finding the patterns of malignant cells and developing a set of 5 to 10 drugs in order to cure or control cancer that classical clinical trials are not going to solve.