Gene Therapy

Gene therapy involves using genetic material to specifically target cancer cells and make them more vulnerable to chemotherapy treatment.
The main type of gene therapy being developed for use in mesothelioma patients is called "suicide gene therapy," because it forces cancer cells to produce substances that cause their death.
When undergoing this type of gene therapy, the patient is treated with a non-infectious virus that has been altered with genetic material that makes them produce a particular protein.
Following this procedure, the patient is then treated with a chemotherapeutic medication that is specially formulated to be toxic only to cancer cells. This type of therapy has produced some promising results for mesothelioma patients, but it is still only available through clinical trials.
Immunotherapy is a type of treatment in which the patient's own immune system is 'tricked' into killing cancer cells. A healthy, normally-functioning immune system does not kill cancer cells, because even though these are diseased cells, the immune system is unable to recognize them as being harmful.
There are two main types of immunotherapy: active and passive. In active immunotherapy, mesothelioma cancer cells are removed from a patient and then treated in a laboratory to turn them into a vaccine. Following this laboratory treatment, the patient is injected with the vaccine and if the treatment is successful, the patient's immune system recognizes the vaccine as a harmful substance, thus recognizing the cancer as being harmful as well.
Passive immunotherapy is somewhat different in that it does not attempt to activate the patient's immune system. Instead, it uses substances such as cytokines and other agents to help boost the patient's immune response to their cancer.