1.Introduction of cellular immunobiotherapy
Kidney cancer is the most common malignant tumor of the urinary system. According to the statistics of the American Society of Cancer Oncology, the incidence of kidney cancer increases by 2% every year worldwide, and nearly 100,000 patients die of kidney cancer every year. Nearly half of the patients with kidney cancer are already in advanced stage when they are first diagnosed, and about 40% of them have recurrence and metastasis after surgery. The 3-year survival rate of those who do not receive treatment is less than 5%. Currently, the main treatment for kidney cancer is surgical resection, and radiotherapy and chemotherapy do not have significant efficacy in the treatment of kidney cancer.
In the 1980s, the successive cellular immunotherapy opened up a new field of biological treatment for kidney cancer, and after nearly 30 years of research and practice, biological cellular immunotherapy has become an effective method for treating kidney cancer. Kidney cancer is one of the few tumors that are effective for immunotherapy. Cellular immunotherapy can directly remove the residual tumor cells in the body, but also improve the overall immune function of the body and solve the subclinical metastasis that is difficult to be solved by conventional therapy, so as to further improve and consolidate the efficacy of kidney cancer, reduce recurrence and improve the quality of life of tumor patients. Therefore, tumor immunotherapy has become the fourth most effective tumor treatment method in clinical practice after surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
2.Mechanism of cellular immunotherapy
Tumor biotherapy is a new therapy for tumor prevention and treatment by applying modern biotechnology, which can achieve anti-tumor effect by mobilizing the host’s natural defense mechanism to produce targeted substances.
The immune system is the defense system of the human body, which plays the function of removing bacteria and viruses as foreign substances on one hand, and eliminating aging cells and cancer cells in the body on the other. The result of the interaction between the body’s immune system and cancer cells determines the final evolution of tumors. For healthy people, their immune system is strong enough to remove mutated cancer cells in time. However, for cancer patients, they generally have low immune function and cannot effectively identify and kill tumor cells. On the other hand, the massive proliferation of tumor cells will further suppress the immune function of patients, and moreover, tumor cells have multiple mechanisms to escape the recognition and destruction of immune cells. Immunotherapy of tumor is to improve the immunogenicity of tumor antigens with the help of immunological theories and techniques to stimulate and enhance the body Immunotherapy for tumor is to improve the immunogenicity of tumor antigens, stimulate and enhance the anti-tumor immune response, increase the sensitivity of tumor to the immune effect of the body, and induce tumor-specific effector cells and molecules in vivo and externally to finally remove tumor.
Surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy can cure some tumor patients, not because they kill all tumor cells, but because when the tumor cell load is obviously reduced, the immune function of the body recovers and removes the tiny residual lesions or obviously inhibits the proliferation of residual tumor cells. Biological cell therapy is precisely to mobilize and strengthen the body’s own tumor-killing system to kill and inhibit cancer cells through human intervention. Both experimental and clinical studies suggest that the immune system of the body has the function of removing tumors. After the surgical removal of local tumors in primary tumors, immunotherapy is used to kill the remaining tumor cells, eliminate the factors of recurrence and metastasis, increase the possibility of cure, prolong the survival time and improve the quality of life.
3.Advantages of cellular immunobiotherapy
(1) Precise effect and good long-term anti-cancer effect. It has high efficiency, generally 40-50%, and the efficiency of kidney cancer is as high as 70%.
(2) No toxic side effects on the body, no adverse effects on normal tissues and no pain for patients.
(3) It can stimulate the systemic anti-tumor effect through active immunity, which has a broader scope of action and is also applicable to malignant tumors with multiple foci or extensive metastases.
(4) It can be used alone or in combination with other therapies.
(5) It can be used for multiple times to improve immunity for better effect.
(6) Tumor biotherapy is a new model in comprehensive tumor treatment, a new hope for tumor treatment in the 21st century, and represents the development direction of tumor treatment.
4.Cellular immune biological therapy clinical program
D C therapy program: characterized by active specific immunotherapy, through obtaining fresh tumor tissue from patient’s own body at the time of surgery, extracting specific antigens, while extracting peripheral blood from patient, obtaining DC cells after special treatment, and then mixing and culturing with tumor antigens to prepare personalized DC tumor vaccine and injecting into patient’s body to achieve the purpose of tumor treatment.
CIK treatment program: characterized by the relay cell therapy, by isolating the patient’s peripheral blood single nuclei cells, induced and amplified by various cytokines in vitro to produce a large number of tumor-killing active cells, and then infusing them back into the patient’s body to kill tumor cells directly.
5.Cellular immunobiotherapy procedure and treatment course
50ml of peripheral blood was collected before the operation. our center pre-treated the collected cells in vitro on the day of collection and started the induction culture, and counted as day 0.
Immunoreactive cells such as DC vaccine, CIK and CTL were prepared by adding tumor antigens during the culture period. Cells were returned after about 10 days of cell culture, and in accordance with the combination of local and systemic treatment, the cells were collected at our center around day 10, 11, 12, and 13, and were sent to the clinical department after the relevant tests (cell supernatant bacterial growth test and tumor antigen concentration measurement) were performed on them. Subcutaneous injection, intradermal injection and intravenous infusion are used. The specific treatment plan and time schedule are individualized according to the differences of each individual.