Immunotherapy: What It Is, How It Works, and What You Can Expect

When your body’s immune system turns against cancer, that’s immunotherapy, a treatment that boosts your body’s natural defenses to find and destroy cancer cells. Also known as biological therapy, it doesn’t attack tumors directly like chemo does — it teaches your immune system to recognize cancer as the enemy. This isn’t science fiction. It’s been saving lives since the 1990s, and today, it’s a standard option for melanoma, lung cancer, kidney cancer, and more.

One major type of immunotherapy is checkpoint inhibitors, drugs that remove the brakes on immune cells so they can attack cancer more aggressively. These include drugs like Keytruda and Opdivo. Another is CAR T-cell therapy, a personalized treatment where your own immune cells are pulled out, trained to hunt cancer, and put back in. It’s complex, expensive, and used mostly for blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma when other treatments fail. Then there’s cancer vaccines and cytokines — tools that either train the immune system ahead of time or give it a boost in real time.

Not everyone responds to immunotherapy. Some people see tumors shrink dramatically. Others see no change at all. That’s because cancer is sneaky — it can hide from immune cells or make them tired. That’s why doctors now test for biomarkers like PD-L1 before starting treatment. It helps predict who’s more likely to benefit. Side effects can include fatigue, skin rashes, or even autoimmune reactions, but they’re often easier to manage than chemo’s nausea and hair loss.

What you’ll find below are real stories and facts about how immunotherapy fits into modern cancer care in India. From cost questions to how it compares with traditional treatments, these posts cut through the noise. You’ll see what works, what doesn’t, and what patients actually experience — no fluff, no hype, just what matters.