Immune System Boot Camp: Training Your Body Against Cancer

Abstract

In this review paper we will be discussing the feasibility of using your immune system to fight off cancer growth, this will be explored through multiple avenues, some of these method’s being from entirely the host, and some of them being influenced by pathogenic activity. While there are different avenues of the training, the part of the system that is being targeted is constantly the innate system, which in the past was thought to not have memory as the adaptive immune system does. This was shown to be false though in recent years where the innate system was able to undergo metabolic and epigenetic rewriting, essentially training them. Hence, the term of trained immunity was coined.¹ The prospect of the topic at hand is monumental, at this point and time we have no solid and surefire way of fighting cancer, we still don’t. However, if in the future 20 or 30 years down the line the key to beating cancer was already in our bodies ready to go, it would be the medical advancement of the century.