Sue Carrington, a Queens resident and patient at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, is surviving melanoma thanks to immunotherapy drugs. This class of drugs “remove the brakes” on the body’s own immune system, unleashing T-cells to fight off cancer cells. After treatment, Carrington’s tumors—the ones she was told would kill her otherwise—had shrunk.

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, deputy director of Perlmutter Cancer Center, is a world-renowned leader in the study of immunotherapy. Dr. Weber, who has spearheaded major advances in its use against melanoma, likens the role of immunotherapy in the battle against cancer to the Western front during World War I. “It’s a messy, brutal battle, with lots of setbacks and lives lost… But we are making progress,” he tells Politico NY.

Immunotherapy has shown its most positive progress in tumors that have the most genetic mutations, such as those resulting from tobacco use and excessive sun exposure. But there is still much work to be done to develop variations of immunotherapy that respond to spontaneous tumors like breast cancer.

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