Stefani Spranger on Immunotherapy Versus Chemotherapy

Stefani Spranger, PhD, postdoctoral fellow, Cancer Research Institute at The University of Chicago, discusses the differences between immunotherapy and chemotherapy.

With chemotherapy, any proliferating cell is targeted and will die. Immuooncology takes a very different approach, says Spranger, because the immune system is for specific at recognizing what the malfunctioning cells are and only killing those cells.

Another big difference is the immune system does have a memory and this memory plays out for the long-term, she says. If a drug is able to active the immune system to recognize that one particular cancer, the cancer will not be forgotten. When there is a recurrence, the immune system will still be able to recognize the same cancer and still be able to fight it.