Thanks to remarkable results in a small group of patients, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, cancer immunotherapy has spurred talk of once impossible-to-imagine cures and has gained its share, perhaps more than its share, of hype.
But immunotherapy is also creating new challenges and exacerbating old ones for doctors, patients, and researchers. These new treatments, which recruit patients’ own immune systems to the fight against tumor cells, are forcing re-assessments of the standards used to gauge a patient’s condition, and complicating clinical trial designs.
