This genius idea drastically cuts cancer immunotherapy costs… while keeping them effective

In 10 seconds? Very low doses of cancer treatments called immune checkpoint inhibitors have been shown to extend the survival of patients with head and neck cancers in India. These exciting results show promise that this type of treatment could be more affordable in low-resource communities around the globe.

What are immune checkpoint inhibitors? In brief, immune checkpoint inhibitors, or ICIs, are a cancer treatment that has revolutionized cancer care in the last decade. So much so, research leading to ICI development merited the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2018. One of the ways cancer survives is by ‘turning off’ the immune cells that are trying to attack it. ICIs help ‘turn on’ these cancer-attacking immune cells and have proven to be quite successful in treating many types of cancers (Check out a digest on ICIs here). One issue with ICIs, however, is that they are notoriously expensive (frequently $50K+), which makes them unaffordable for about 98% of those who need them.