Christian Capitini on Response to Immunotherapy

Christian Capitini, MD, from University of Wisconsin-Madison explains the response to immunotherapy and how they can differ from what is expected in chemotherapy.

The effects of immunotherapies can sometimes show no clinical response when the immune system is actually recognizing the agent. This was seen in the testing of cancer vaccines. With checkpoint inhibitors, it seemed, at first,that the tumors were growing. However, Capitini explains, the tumors were found to be shrinking later on, as the immune system was activated within the tumor.