Question: “I’ve seen commercials for immunotherapy as a treatment for lung cancer. How does it work? How do I know if it’s a good treatment for me?”

Answer: Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that helps the body’s own immune system find and attack cancer cells.  

Your immune system protects your body against germs and diseases that can make you sick. Most of the time, it can tell which cells are healthy and which cells are disease cells or germ cells that need to be attacked. 

When your immune system finds cancer cells, it will try to destroy them too, but sometimes cancer cells can trick your immune system by hiding from it. They do this by attaching themselves to immune cells which slows down or stops your immune system from attacking the cancer cells. The place on the cells where cancer attaches to the immune cell is called a “checkpoint.”  

There are proteins on the surface of both cells that attach the immune cell and the cancer cell together. These proteins are called PD-1 or CTLA-4 on the immune cell and PD-L1 on the cancer cell.  Immunotherapy works by blocking the cancer cells from attaching to immune cells. This allows your immune system to better attack the cancer cells. A “checkpoint inhibitor” is a type of immunotherapy. It works by blocking the checkpoint proteins from attaching to each other.  

There are many immunotherapy drugs used to treat lung cancer, some of which you have seen commercials for on TV. Your healthcare team will decide if an immunotherapy drug is a good option for you based on your specific case. Biomarker testing can also be helpful information to determine if immunotherapy is right for you. Biomarkers are pieces of information cancer cells carry that drive them to grow and spread. If the results of your testing show that you have a high level of certain proteins like PD-L1, immunotherapy may be a good option for you.  

In each issue of  Your Community, we will be answering your questions about lung cancer and/or GO2 programs and services, including questions about screening, treatment types and advancements, clinical trials, support services and the lung cancer community. Please email your questions to yourcommunity@go2.org. 

Please note that the information included in any published answer is for educational pursuit only and is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. The reader should always consult their healthcare provider to determine the appropriateness of the information for their own situation. Nothing from GO2 for Lung Cancer should be construed as an attempt to offer or render a medical opinion.