New immunotherapeutic therapeutic approaches

For a long time all attempts to use the body’s own immune response against tumor cells for an effective lung cancer therapy had been without success. The increasing comprehension of the molecular control of the immune system has recently lead to the development of new drugs, the so-called immune checkpoint inhibitors (also called anti-PD1, anti PDL1 antibody), which have a surprisingly good efficacy in various forms of lung cancer. The effectiveness is due to an activation of the body’s own T cells (T-lymphocytes) against the tumor cells.