Medium Dose Chemotherapy

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5818299/

The pictorial representation above indicates the following:

1. MTD (maximum tolerated dose chemotherapy - which is the standard of care) is represented in green. Although high doses of chemotherapy kill many tumor cells, this results in a "transient" immune response. As the chemotherapy promotes the development of a population of cancer cells that are resistant, there is an inadequate immune response, so the resistant cells eventually proliferate unchecked.
2. Low dose daily chemotherapy (represented in blue) inhibits angiogenesis (development of new blood vessels for cancer growth) and kills some cancer cells. Unfortunately, with low dose chemotherapy, again the immune response is not sustained, and eventually the resistant cancer cells proliferate unchecked.
3. Medium dose intermittent chemotherapy (represented in red) kills many cancer cells while sustaining an immune response.

Conventional dosing of cytotoxic cancer chemotherapy is often immunosuppressive and associated with drug resistance and tumor regrowth after a short period of tumor shrinkage or growth stasis. However, many cytotoxic cancer chemotherapeutic drugs can kill tumor cells by an immunogenic cell death pathway, which activates robust innate and adaptive anti-tumor immune responses and has the potential to greatly increase the efficacy of chemotherapy.

The goal with appropriate cancer treatment, which is administered in our office, is to kill tumor cells while simultaneously promoting an anti-tumor immune response.

See the next tab entitled, "Low dose immunotherapy."