National Cancer Immunotherapy Awareness Month: Looking Back to Look Forward

Written by: Travis Fischer, PhD

Despite cancer remaining one of the leading causes of death in the United States, there’s also real progress worth celebrating. Survival rates have improved, treatments have become more precise, and one breakthrough in particular has reshaped what’s possible: immunotherapy.  

Instead of attacking cancer directly, immunotherapy harnesses a patient’s own immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells.  

Cancer Immunotherapy Awareness Month is an opportunity to reflect on how this field began, how far it has come, and what the future holds for this powerful and constantly evolving approach to cancer care. 

What is Immunotherapy? 

Your immune system is your body’s security team. It protects you from infections and helps remove abnormal cells before they become dangerous. One of the immune system’s most important defenders is the T cell, a type of white blood cell trained to recognize and eliminate threats. 

But cancer is tricky. Because it comes from our own cells, tumors can disguise themselves or send signals that “turn off” T cells. When that happens, the immune system can’t do its job and the cancer grows. 

Immunotherapy works by re-energizing the immune system so it can see and attack cancer again. 

Different Types of Immunotherapy 

Immunotherapy encompasses several different approaches, each designed to help the immune system better recognize and eliminate cancer.  

• Targeted antibody therapies: These drugs (e.g., Rituximab, Herceptin) attach to specific markers on cancer cells and flag them for destruction  

• CAR-T cell therapy: Health providers take a patient’s T cells, transfer them to better recognize cancer, grow many of them, and infuse them back into the body 

• Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB): These drugs (e.g., Keytruda, Opdivo, Yervoy) release the “brakes” that can shut down T cells.  

For this blog post, I will focus on ICB therapy, the area where much of today’s research and clinical progress is happening. 

Figure 1: Different types of immunotherapy and cancers they are used for. 

How Checkpoint Inhibitors Work 

Your immune system has built-in “checkpoints” — proteins like CTLA-4 and PD-1 — that act as brakes to prevent T cells from attacking healthy tissue. These brakes are essential for preventing autoimmune disease. 

But cancer has learned to exploit these brakes. 

Tumor cells can activate checkpoint pathways to turn T cells off, making the immune system ignore them. It’s like a burglar convincing the security guard that everything is fine.  

Checkpoint inhibitors block these signals, allowing T cells to regain their anti-cancer activity and attack the cancer again. They don’t create a new immune response, but rather unleash the one that was already there. 

Figure 2: (Left) Tumor cell inhibiting a T cell through checkpoint molecules. (Right) ICB therapy blocking checkpoint molecules to restore T cell anti-cancer activities. 

Since the first checkpoint inhibitor (Yervoy) was approved in 2011, immunotherapy has transformed cancer care: 

• It has become a standard treatment for cancers like melanoma, lung cancer, and kidney cancer. 

• In some cases, they are now used as first-line therapy because of their ability to improve survival compared to traditional treatments.  

• Some patients experience long-term remission, remaining cancer-free for years.  

• Clinical trials continue to expand their use into more cancer types and earlier stages of disease. 

These advances were only possible because of clinical trials, which remain essential for improving how immunotherapy is used, identifying who benefits most, and discovering new combinations that work even better. 

Figure 3: Different types of cancer and FDA approved ICB drugs used to treat them. 

Looking Ahead  

While Immune Checkpoint Blockade therapy has transformed cancer care and brought new hope to many patients, there is still work to be done. Not every patient responds to the therapy, and for others, the benefits are not always permanent. As scientists and clinicians, our challenge now is to better understand the limitations of these therapies so we can design better, more precise therapies that extend their benefits to more people. For the millions of individuals and families affected by cancer, immunotherapy represents not just a treatment, but the promise that cancer care can be more effective and personalized.  

Cancer Immunotherapy Awareness Month is a reminder of how far we’ve come and how much hope this field continues to offer. By understanding the science and continued research, we move closer to a future where more people not only survive cancer but live long, full lives after it.  

Author Bio:  

Dr. Travis Fischer is a recent graduate from the University of Iowa where he earned his PhD in Biomedical Science with a focus in Cancer Biology under the mentorship of Dr. George Weiner. His research primarily focused on understanding how immunotherapy shapes the anti-tumor immune response over time. His research goals focus on a “bench to bedside” approach, taking discoveries from the laboratory to the clinic to improve patient outcomes. He has been a member of the Iowa Cancer Consortium since 2022.