What is immunotherapy?

Alongside traditional cancer treatments like surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, immunotherapy has emerged over the past few decades as an effective treatment strategy for many patients.

Immunotherapy works by bolstering the body’s own immune system to combat cancer and has shown success in improving survival rates, enhancing quality of life, and extending the time to recurrence, even in patients with advanced or previously untreatable cancers. The Riddell Centre for Cancer Immunotherapy is dedicated to advancing these treatments to further improve patient outcomes.

There are many different types of immunotherapies under development, including:

The Riddell Centre will support research into all forms of cancer immunotherapy, however the major area of initial focus will be on cell therapy. Cell therapy involves modifying a patient’s cells to boost their cancer-fighting abilities. One example is chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, or CAR-T cell therapy, where a patient’s T cells are genetically engineered to target cancer cells specifically. These modified cells are reintroduced into the patient to seek out and destroy cancer cells.

Frequently asked questions about cancer immunotherapy

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The Riddell Centre is comprised of three interrelated research prioities critical for bench-to-bedside-and-back cancer immunotherapy research: Discovery and Innovation, Biomanufacturing, and Clinical Research and Translation. The ultimate and future goal of our research centre is to move our immunotherapies into the health system as standard of care therapeutics.