Marcos Pires, PhD, assistant professor at Lehigh University, discusses future applications of immunotherapy.
Marcos Pires, PhD, assistant professor at Lehigh University, discusses future applications of immunotherapy.
Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)
“I think, if anything, the great success immunotherapies against cancer is teaching us, is that there’s no reason to believe that [immunotherapy] can’t be evaluated for a number of diseases, where you have cells or pathogens you’d like to remove from the system. It will probably be the case that there is a version of an agent or a therapy that can go after bacteria. I imagine the same can be true for viruses, [and] perhaps for fungal infections as well.
It’s unclear if there’s a real limit [to what illnesses immunotherapies can fight], because after all, if you think about what it’s doing, it’s just strengthening a protective feature that we have already.”