By Sarah Truong

Sarah is an M. Sc. student studying prostate cancer at the Vancouver Prostate Centre. When she’s not in the lab, she can usually be found baking up a storm, playing ultimate Frisbee, or reading a book (when she hasn’t spent all day reading scientific papers!).

CANCER IMMUNOTHERAPY: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Over the past few decades, cancer therapy has advanced in leaps and bounds. Despite this improvement (and also spurred on by it), scientists and researchers are constantly looking for newer and better ways to treat cancer patients. Traditionally, cancer patients are treated with chemotherapy, radiation therapy or surgery. Chemotherapy is a treatment that uses drugs and radiation therapy uses high energy waves to kill cancer cells. However, both treatments don’t only affect cancer cells. They can be extremely toxic and have many severe side effects, as they are systemic treatments, meaning that they can affect cells all over the body,…