Experiencing the long battle of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, feeling the endless torture of pain, vomiting and insomnia! Those warriors who fight with tumors never give up on the hard road and keep moving forward in hope! When medicine enters the 21st century, traditional tumor treatment methods have been improved and new treatment methods have emerged, so that tumor treatment has made great progress and many patients have benefited from it. Meanwhile, with the conversion of treatment thinking, making tumor patients live with more dignity and quality has become an important direction of tumor treatment. After surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, biologic therapy has become the fourth major tumor treatment. For most tumor patients, biologic therapy is still a new term, next, we will take you to understand biologic therapy for tumor. What is biologic therapy for tumors? Biological therapy for tumors is the treatment of tumors with agents of biological origin or agents that modulate biological responses. Biological therapy works through the following ways: 1) regulating cell biological behavior (such as proliferation, apoptosis, differentiation, angiogenesis, invasion and metastasis, etc.); 2) regulating the immune response of patients. Biological therapy has the characteristics of tumor specificity (highly selective), mechanism of action and toxic side effects different from conventional therapy, not easy to produce drug resistance, less toxic side effects, etc. What are the commonly used biological treatment methods for tumor? Cytokine therapy: Cytokines are synthesized by biologically active immune cells (T cells, B cells, NK cells, etc.) or mesenchymal cells (vascular endothelial cells, epidermal cells, etc.), whose functions are to regulate cell growth, regulate autoimmune response, participate in inflammation response and participate in tumor extinction. The main cytokines commonly used in clinical practice include: interferon, interleukin, hematopoietic stimulating factor, tumor necrosis factor, repair factor, etc. This type of treatment is simple and easy, with little pain. Some patients can see low fever and mild gastrointestinal reaction. 2.Tumor vaccine: Using tumor antigens to induce specific anti-tumor effect through active immunity and stimulate the body’s own immune protection mechanism to treat tumor or prevent recurrence. Tumor antigens are divided into autologous antigens (generally, tumor cells are isolated by removing tumor cells from biopsies after surgery or puncture, or by extracting fluid from the chest and abdominal cavity, and become autologous antigens after laboratory treatment. Tumor cells cannot be used if pathological sections have been prepared) and common antigens (tumor cells of the same pathological type have the same tumor antigen information and are suitable for patients who cannot obtain autologous antigens). Tumor vaccines are currently being used and developed: including cell-based tumor vaccines, viral vaccines, protein/peptide vaccines, nucleic acid vaccines, anti-unique type vaccines and allogeneic vaccines. DC is the most powerful antigen-presenting cell known in the body, and DC cell therapy is performed by collecting autologous blood from patients, isolating DC cells in vitro, co-culturing them with tumor antigens, capturing the antigen information in vitro, and then transferring the information to T and B lymphocytes after transfusion back into the patient. DC cell therapy, on the one hand, can kill tumor cells, on the other hand, can regulate the overall immunity of patients, improve their immunity, and improve their mental status, appetite and anti-infection ability after treatment, and also improve their tolerance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. It can also improve the patient’s tolerance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. 3.Immune cell therapy: The patient’s own immune cells obtained through cell isolation technology can be induced by cytokines to expand a large number of immune cells with high anti-tumor activity, which can be infused back into the patient’s body to enhance the immune function and anti-tumor of tumor patients. CIK (cytokine-induced killer cell) therapy is the most commonly used treatment. CIK is a group of heterogeneous cells obtained by co-culturing human peripheral blood single nucleus cells with various cytokines in vitro for a period of time, which has both the strong anti-tumor activity of T lymphocytes and the tumor-killing advantages of NK cells. Their rapid proliferation rate, high tumor-killing activity and broad tumor-killing spectrum are equally sensitive to a variety of drug-resistant tumor cells, and are considered to be the preferred method of next-generation anti-tumor immunotherapy. Also as autologous blood cell transfusion, there is no problem of rejection, very few patients have allergy and hypothermia, a handful of which will subside on their own without special treatment. 4.Tumor molecular targeting therapy: At present, molecular targeting therapy, a biological therapy that plays an important role in tumor treatment, has been widely used in clinical practice. Any tumor treatment drugs need to act on certain targets, chemotherapy drugs with cytotoxicity can also act on the synthesis and replication of DNA, but the selectivity is not enough and the adverse reactions are large, while molecular targeted drugs are drugs researched and developed according to the differences in molecular biology between tumor cells and normal cells, which can selectively target tumor specific molecular targets without affecting normal cells. Currently, the most commonly used clinical treatments include: monoclonal antibodies and small molecule targeted drugs. Monoclonal antibody drugs: mainly through the inhibition of epidermal growth factor receptor blocking tumor growth, blocking the role of tubular endothelial growth factor blocking the blood supply to the tumor, inhibit the spread of tumor in the body, enhance the effect of chemotherapy. Commonly used drugs include: Herceptin (Herceptin – trastuzumab: mainly used for breast cancer); Rituximab (Merova – rituximab , mainly used for lymphoma); C225 (Erbitux) ( Erbitux. cetuximab, cetuximab: mainly for the advanced treatment of colorectal cancer) and Avastin Anvitin (bevacizumab – mainly for breast, lung, colon and rectal cancers). Also included are radionuclide labeled monoclonal antibodies for some lymphomas (e.g., Zevalin, Bexxar). The mechanism of action of small molecule targeted drugs is mostly competition for binding to receptors that activate tumor-associated kinases, blocking the activation of kinases and thus inhibiting tumor-activated signaling. Commonly used drugs are: STI571,Imatinib (Glivec: Glivec – mainly used in leukemia, gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumors), ZD1839 Gefitinib (Iressa: Eressa: mainly used in non-small white lung cancer), OSI774 Erlotinib (Tarceva –Terokay: mainly used for non-small cell lung cancer, combined with pancreatic cancer ), etc. Meanwhile, there is another molecular targeted therapy drug that is widely used: Endo (recombinant human vascular endothelial inhibitor injection – mainly used in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer) can inhibit tumor angiogenesis, block the blood supply to the tumor and promote apoptosis of tumor cells. Compared with chemotherapy drugs, molecular targeted drugs have the advantages of fast efficacy, high selectivity and low side effects, but as biological agents, some patients have allergic reactions, and at the same time, they have the disadvantages of causing tumor effusion variation, high incidence of drug resistance rate and generally expensive. 5.Tumor gene therapy: Tumor gene therapy is the application of gene transfer technology to introduce normal functional genes into target cells, directly repair and correct the structural and functional defects of tumor-related genes, and inhibit and kill tumor cells by enhancing the host’s defense mechanism and ability to kill tumors. Immunogene therapy (cytokine gene therapy), tumor suppressor gene therapy, antisense RNA therapy, suicide gene therapy, and drug-resistant gene transfer therapy. At present, most of the gene therapies deal with clinical research stage, and the only gene therapy drug currently listed in China is tumor suppressor gene therapy drug – recombinant human p53 adenovirus injection (today’s life): mainly carries gene p53, p53 gene is the most important tumor suppressor gene in human body, and is the genome protector. More than 60% of human tumors are related to p53 gene mutation, and p53 gene therapy is effective regardless of whether p53 gene mutation occurs in tumor cells or not. It can initiate apoptosis signaling pathway, inhibit tumor cell survival signaling, inhibit tumor tissue angiogenesis and tumor cell material and energy metabolism, inhibit tumor cell infiltration and metastasis, reverse tumor cell resistance to radiotherapy/chemotherapy, block tumor cell cycle and put tumor cells in a severe hibernation state, initiate “paracrine effect” and regulate the body’s immune response. “It regulates the body’s immune response and kills tumor cells. In the early stage, Imazan is mainly used for the treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer, but now its application has been extended to the treatment of various solid tumors such as lung cancer, liver cancer and esophageal cancer. However, its price is expensive. When is the best time to choose biologic therapy for tumor patients? Before conducting biologic therapy, it is recommended to reduce the tumor load as much as possible through surgery, radiotherapy, and minimally invasive methods to remove the lesions, and then proceed with biologic therapy. For tumors with few distant metastases, appropriate courses of chemotherapy or radiotherapy and surgical resection can be considered before biologic therapy. For patients with advanced tumors that have metastasized systemically and have too heavy a tumor load for chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery, biological therapy can improve the quality of life, promote patients’ “survival with tumor”, reduce pain to a certain extent and prolong their lives. The Department of Comprehensive Therapy of Zhongshan Hospital in Hubei Province is a comprehensive tumor treatment center with cellular biotherapy as its main feature. It adopts DC+CIK cells, cytokines, molecular targeting therapy and other biological therapies, combined with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, interventional therapy, traditional Chinese medicine treatment and other traditional therapies to provide comprehensive and multi-targeted treatment for malignant tumors. The Department of Comprehensive Treatment of Zhongshan Hospital in Hubei Province warmly reminds all patients: when diagnosed with early-stage tumor and undergo surgery, please do not take a chance, we recommend that you must undergo systemic treatment after surgery, including chemotherapy or biological therapy. When patients are diagnosed with mid to late stage tumor, you should not be frustrated, comprehensive treatment can make you full of hope in the road of fighting against tumor! No matter what, we are with you, let us work together to make your pain “tumor” lost and your beautiful smile “tumor”.