Has anyone or someone you know have taken immunotherapy for treatment? I've heard good things about it but our doctor says it has a very small success rate.
Hi , I am on the immunotherapy drug Pembrolizumab, not for the Colon cancer that your husband had (I read your profile) but for metastatic melanoma that had spread to my abdominal and pelvic lymph nodes and to my left ovary. When I started the drug in 2016 it had just become available on the NHS and successful moved me to no evidence of disease in 6 months. I to was told it had a success rate of less than 20% but you never know what side of the statistics you are going to fall. If you have any questions just ask, I have a long profile of info to.
Thank you so much for this information. This will inspire me to continue to ask the doctor to try immunotherapy. And you're absolutely right, they don't know what side of the sstatistics we're on.
There are a number of people in the melanoma group, lung cancer group, and possibly the kidney group that have experience of immunotherapy. You could put the immunotherapy drug that you are interested in, in the search bar and see what posts it comes up with and reach out with any questions you have.
I receive rituximab as part of my chemotherapy protocol for lymphoma.
Immunotherapy is complicated. It's a targeted treatment so it only affects specific types of cells in certain ways which means each form of immunotherapy is only useful for particular types of cancer.
It is also expensive, so it's only subsidised under certain circumstances. Despite rituximab being available to me for chemotherapy, it is not available to me as a maintenance treatment after I finish chemo. It is, however, approved for use as a maintenance treatment for a different type of lymphoma.
Long term, targeted therapies are the future of cancer treatment. Right now they generally work best in combination with conventional therapies but the balance shifts extremely rapidly.
