OUR BRAIN AND THE IMMUNE SYSTEM Part 2
TREATMENT OF AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES AND CANCERS. A NEW APPROACH IS NEEDED.
During my years of practice, while trying to treat the patients with autoimmune gastrointestinal diseases, such as ulcerative colitis (UC), and Crohn’s disease (CD), with cortisone, immunosuppressive drugs, and biologicals, always made me feel uneasy, uncomfortable, sometimes frustrated. Because I knew that these drugs do not cure the disease, they only provide symptomatic relieve. In addition, these drugs could have serious adverse effects, they suppress the immune system thereby increase the risk of opportunistic infections, and formation of new cancers.
I knew that the real reason of autoimmune diseases was unknown. Our immune system is not a fool. It is smart enough to differentiate self-cells and organs from non-self, and does not attack and destroy self-organs, unless it perceives that these organs are abnormal.
It is possible that these organs are somewhat damaged with mild infections, or some unknown reasons before the immune system perceives them as abnormal and attacks them with immune reactions. Then, our treatment aim must be directed to find out these unknown reasons, and to try to eliminate them. Trying to interfere with the immune reactions is never a solution. Because it is the nature of the immune system to react, if it perceives any abnormal structures in the body.
Maybe soon, with the help of advanced A.I. tools, we will be able to find these unknown reasons that induce organ abnormalities which sends wrong signals to the immune system.
When it comes to cancer treatments, available methods of surgery, and chemo-radiation have been used for millennia with only some success. These methods do not only kill or eliminate cancer cells, they also kill normal cells, suppress the immune system, and cause many other serious adverse effects. Therefore, they are not the best treatment options. As suggested by the expert scientists, in the field of immunology and oncology, the best methods would be to harvest the help of the immune system with its biological killing power, without any serious adverse events.
An important question to ask here is, “why is our immune system is able to detect any abnormal self-cells and tissues and try to eliminate them, remain silent in some cancers that originate from mutated abnormal self-cells?”
According to expert investigators on the field, cancer cells use various, very complex immunologic and other mechanisms to avoid detection by the host’s immune system. Cancer cells accomplish the immune evasion by producing special protein molecules to inhibit detection by the host’s immune system. This is called “immunologic check point regulation” in medical jargon.
Knowing cancers’ immunologic mechanisms and designing drugs, cancer vaccines and other means, would be the essence of caners immunotherapy. Along these lines, many immunologic cancer treatment methods have been developed, or are in process of developments. Among them immunologic check point inhibitors drugs, CAR-T cell therapy, oncologic viruses, mRNA-based cancer vaccines, epigenetic modulation to target changes in gene expression to reinstate the immune recognitions of the cancer tumors.
The details of these very complex immunologic cancer treatment methods remain outside of our article, however the Trump Administration’s decision to cancel all the research grands is very disturbing, and not compatible with “MAGA” rhetoric.
