page_title: Cancer immunotherapy
section_title: Human/non-human balance
hierarchical_section_title: Cancer immunotherapy / Antibody therapy / Antibody types / Human/non-human balance
caption_attribution_description: English: When the Fc receptors interact with Fc regions of antibodies bound to cancer cells, the NK cell releases perforin and granzyme, leading to cancer cell apoptosis.
context_page_description: Cancer immunotherapy is the artificial stimulation of the immune system to treat cancer, improving on the immune system's natural ability to fight the disease. It is an application of the fundamental research of cancer immunology and a growing subspeciality of oncology.
  Cancer immunotherapy exploits the fact that cancer cells often have tumor antigens, molecules on their surface that can be detected by the antibody proteins of the immune system, binding to them. The tumor antigens are often proteins or other macromolecules. Normal antibodies bind to external pathogens, but the modified immunotherapy antibodies bind to the tumor antigens marking and identifying the cancer cells for the immune system to inhibit or kill.
  In 2018, American immunologist James P. Allison and Japanese immunologist Tasuku Honjo received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.
context_section_description: Antibodies may also referred to as murine, chimeric, humanized or human. Murine antibodies are from mice and carry a risk of immune reaction. Chimeric antibodies attempt to reduce murine antibodies' immunogenicity by replacing part of the antibody with the corresponding human counterpart, known as the constant region. Humanized antibodies are almost completely human; only the complementarity determining regions of the variable regions are derived from murine sources. Human antibodies have been produced using unmodified human DNA.
caption: Antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity. When the Fc receptors on natural killer (NK) cells interact with Fc regions of antibodies bound to cancer cells, the NK cell releases perforin and granzyme, leading to cancer cell apoptosis.
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