Immunotherapy to Fight Infections and Inflammation

A New Generation of Immunotherapy

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Immunotherapy is commonly defined as “the treatment of disease by activating or suppressing the immune system. Immunotherapies designed to elicit or amplify an immune response are classified as activation immunotherapies, while immunotherapies that reduce or suppress are classified as suppression immunotherapies.”

The first generation immunotherapies were developed in the 1990s to suppress the adaptive immune system in autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and psoriasis. In the last ten years, a second generation of immunotherapies were developed to activate the adaptive immune system to target cancer cells and attack them.

Both efforts focused on treatment of chronic diseases and rely largely on complex biological molecules that require repeated treatments, over months or years, to achieve and maintain therapeutic benefits. In the case of the immune suppressive therapies there can be serious, even life threatening, side effects.