Immunotherapy takes advantage of the methods used by our own immune system to attack cancer cells. There are two types of immunotherapy: passive or active. Passive immunotherapy involves the direct administration by doctors of molecules or cells to a patient and requires no involvement by the patient’s own immune system.
Active immunotherapy attempts to activate the patient’s immune system to attack the cancer cells. Immunotherapy could someday help to avoid the toxicity of chemotherapy and radiation for a variety of different types of cancers. For most cancers, this type of therapy is very new, and research is still ongoing. For bladder cancer, one type of immunotherapy, called BCG therapy, has been available for many years with excellent results.