Immunotherapies have great potential in the treatment of cancers. CAR-T therapy is becoming more common in the treatment of rare blood cancers, retargeting T cells to the cancer cells. This allows for more specific treatment of cancers and may reduce the side effects a patient experiences.
Check-point inhibitors control the natural brake of the immune system, preventing cancers from suppressing immune function when targeting them. This can be manipulated by drugs, allowing the immune system to target the cancerous cells.
However, as these are immunotherapies, things can go wrong. CAR-T cell therapy can result in cytokine storms and infusion reactions. This causes the immune system to go into overdrive, becoming highly active and leading to multiple organ failure. Infusion reactions are caused where the drug is delivered by intravenous injection. Although these are normally mild, they can be serious, leading to anaphylactic shock.
These therapies will likely become safer and have fewer unpleasant side effects as they are developed further. They are currently very expensive, due to the custom nature of the drugs. This means they are not currently accessible to many people. Again, this will probably change as the technology matures (and comes out of patents!) to allow others to manufacture and develop it.