Immunotherapy for oral cancer
Immunotherapy helps to strengthen or restore the immune system's ability to fight cancer. This works to kill cancer cells and stop cancer cells from growing and spreading.
Immunotherapy is sometimes used to treat oral cancer. If you have immunotherapy, your healthcare team will use what they know about the cancer and about your health to plan the drugs, doses and schedules.
Immunotherapy may be the only treatment you have or it may be used along with other treatments. You may have immunotherapy to:
- treat resectable oral cancer (the tumour can be removed by surgery)
- treat unresectable oral cancer (the tumour cannot be removed by surgery)
- treat metastatic oral cancer (the cancer has spread)
- treat recurrent oral cancer (the cancer has come back after being treated) or oral cancer that doesn’t respond to other treatments
Immune checkpoint inhibitors
The immune system normally stops itself from attacking normal cells in the body by using specific proteins called checkpoints. Checkpoints slow down or stop an immune system response. Some oral cancer cells sometimes use these checkpoints to hide and avoid being attacked by the immune system. Immune checkpoint inhibitors work by blocking the checkpoint proteins so immune system cells (called T cells) attack and kill the cancer cells.
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda)
may be used to treat locally advanced oral cancer. It may also be used as a
Nivolumab (Opdivo) is used to treat metastatic or recurrent oral cancer that has stopped responding to chemotherapy with platinum drugs such as cisplatin or carboplatin.
Side effects of immunotherapy
Side effects of immunotherapy will depend mainly on the type of drug or drug combination, the dose, how it's given and your overall health. Tell your healthcare team if you have side effects that you think might be from immunotherapy. The sooner you tell them of any problems, the sooner they can suggest ways to help you deal with them.
These are common side effects of immunotherapy for oral cancer:
- fatigue
- loss of appetite
- nausea and vomiting
- diarrhea
- constipation
- skin problems including rash and itching
- headaches
- cough
- pain in the abdomen
Find out more about immunotherapy
Find out more about immunotherapy. To make the decisions that are right for you, ask your healthcare team questions about immunotherapy.
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