Do Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors Truly Deserve the Label “Immunotherapy?”
And…is it time we rethink what that label even means?
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), like anti-PD-1, anti-PD-L1, or anti-CTLA-4 drugs, have become synonymous with immunotherapy. And in a narrow sense, they’ve earned it: by lifting the so-called brakes on T cells, they’ve transformed outcomes for patients with hot immune-inflamed tumors. Keytruda (Merck’s anti-PD-1 immunotherapy) has been a clinical and financial tour de force, “…a gamechanger in oncology with 41 indications and $25 billion in sales last year [2023], eclipsing AbbVie’s Humira as the bestselling drug in any therapeutic area.”1
But there’s a disconnect worth exploring.
✅ ICIs do engage the immune system — technically.
❌ But they don’t work if the immune system isn’t already there.
That’s not therapy in the generative sense — that’s therapy as permission.
The term “immunotherapy” has become shorthand for innovation, for modern medicine, for treatments that don’t rely on poison or burn—Nobel prizes in medicine for Dr. James Allison and Dr. Tasuku Honjo for discovering CTLA-4 and PD-1 proteins expressed on the surface of T cells, respectively. Yet too often, immunotherapy is used to describe drugs like Keytruda that manage existing immunity, not awaken or direct it.
Let’s ask a harder question: Is “immunotherapy” even the right term for the next era of immune-engaging drugs?
At Provectus, our answer is: maybe not.
We’re developing drug product candidates based on our proprietary, pharmaceutical-grade Rose Bengal Sodium (RBS)—a [very] bioactive small molecule that does far more than just unblock a checkpoint. In our view, RBS may act as a biological systems signaler:
It could trigger immune responses where none existed.
It could alter immune behavior without targeting a single receptor.
It could reset pathological cell states without needing to be “matched” to tumor markers.
That’s not just immunotherapy. That’s something broader, deeper, and more adaptive. We call it “systems medicine.”
What is systems medicine?
It’s a new class of therapeutics that doesn’t aim for one mutation, one checkpoint, one receptor, one target, or one pathway. Instead, systems medicines should:
Read the dysfunction of a system,
Respond with context-aware correction, and
Engage immunity, stress, and repair mechanisms—all at once.
RBS may belong to this new class. And if it does, it wouldn’t just fit into the immunotherapy box—we believe it might redefine it.
So no, RBS hasn’t asked for the label.
But it just might earn it—on its own terms.
Because the future of medicine isn’t one-on-one. It’s system-on-system.
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https://www.pharmavoice.com/news/merck-keytruda-cancer-oncology-subcutaneous-roche-bristol-myers/733544/