At Providence, our top-ranked specialists use immunotherapy to treat various cancers. Immunotherapy is a cancer treatment that uses substances made from living organisms to help your immune system fight cancer. As part of its normal function, the immune system detects and destroys abnormal cells to prevent the growth of more cancers. There are several types of immunotherapy treatments, including T-cell transfer therapy, monoclonal antibodies, treatment vaccines, and more.

Radiation therapy is a cancer treatment that uses high doses of radiation to destroy cancer cells or slow their growth by damaging their DNA. When that happens, the cancer cells stop dividing or die completely, and then get broken down by the body. There are two main types of radiation therapy, external beam and internal. It usually takes days or weeks of treatment for cancer cells to die. After that, the cells will keep dying for weeks or months after radiation therapy ends.

Surgery is an important treatment method for many types of cancers. It involves removing cancerous cells and tumors from the affected area. Some surgeries are minimally invasive, like removing cancerous cells from the surface of the skin. Others may involve an operation to remove cancer cells from organs or elsewhere inside the body. Modern surgical methods can involve minimal incisions and less recovery time than previous methods. Surgery can be part of your overall treatment plan for many kinds of cancers.

Targeted therapy is a type of cancer treatment that targets proteins that control how cancer cells grow, divide, and spread. Targeted therapy generally is administered through one of two methods:

• Small-molecule drugs, which are small enough to enter cells easily, can be used for targets that are inside cells.
• Monoclonal antibodies, which are proteins produced in the lab. These proteins are designed to attach to specific targets found on cancer cells. Some monoclonal antibodies mark cancer cells so that they will be better seen and destroyed by the immune system.

These types of therapies help to find, slow and destroy cancer cells in very targeted ways.