Chemo versus immunotherapy - Re-Post

What is the difference between chemotherapy and immunotherapy? 

By: Robin Geller

Chemotherapy is the use of drugs and other toxins to kill tumor cells. 

Actually most of these compounds are designed as metabolic poisons to kill 

any rapidly dividing cell, normal as well as cancerous. That is why 

chemotherapy patients often lose their hair and have skin and digestive 

problems during the course of treatment; hair, skin and gut epithelium are 

all rapidly dividing cells. 



Immunotherapy on the other hand, includes a variety of approaches designed 

to augment or redirect the body's own immune system to destroy the tumor 

cells. The immune system is extremely specific and when these approaches 

work they are able to target just the tumor and not normal tissue. 

However, most tumors have developed mechanisms to avoid detection by the 

immune system so it often takes a great deal of effort to get immune cells 

which can effectively identify and destroy the tumor cells. Drugs and 

other compounds are used here,too, but they are designed to act on the 

cells of the immune system in order to activate them, they do not act on 

the tumor cells directly.