Plasma exchange therapy holds promise in the management of advanced cancer

Cancer is now emerging as the second most common cause of death worldwide. Currently the most widely used treatments for solid cancer are surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone therapy, all of which are of limited effects in improvement of the survival. It is well-established that circulating factors are involved in the development of cancer. And plasma exchange is a well-established therapeutic procedure commonly used in many autoimmune diseases through the elimination of pathologic mediators, including auto-antibodies, complement components, and cytokines. Thus, we hypothesize that plasma exchange therapy alone or in combination with the routine therapeutics should be considered as an alternative for the present treatments. Future clinical studies are needed to validate the hypothesis.