Immunotherapy for Common and Rare Cancers

Immunotherapies that harness the body’s unique ability to fight disease by triggering the immune system to identify and attack cancer cells, shrink tumors or slow their growth while minimizing damage to healthy cells are among the most exciting developments in cancer care.

Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care offers patients Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved immunotherapy drugs used alone or in combination with standard therapies to treat both common and rare cancers, including: 

Together with our colleagues at the National Cancer Institute (NCI)–designated Albert Einstein Cancer Center, our team is actively involved in the discovery and testing of new immunotherapies that will more precisely target cancer cells.

Among our current immunotherapy research and clinical trials:

• Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care is a lead site nationally for a highly promising and unique study combining a novel vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV)—the causative agent against a large number of head and neck cancers—with immunotherapy to boost the efficacy of these exciting novel agents.

• Our thoracic research program participates in a range of clinical studies exploring combinations of immune and targeted therapies, such as a combination study of the standard immunotherapy durvalumab with a novel agent that can modify cancer cell DNA (the so-called HiDAC inhibitor).

  This combination may be able to enhance the immune system’s ability to recognize cancer as foreign and enhance immune responses even in patients who might be resistant to single-agent immunotherapy.

• Einstein researchers are leading studies of FLT3 ligand immunotherapy for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer that has progressed following standard therapy and a study funded by the National Institutes of Health to develop novel T-cell-activating agents that more precisely target tumors and cause fewer side effects.

Go here to find out more about cancer clinical trials