The cancer treatment revolution.
Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: A revolution in cancer drug therapy has been brewing for the past twenty years. The three decades of clinical research carried out between 1955 and 1985 were largely devoted to the discovery and clinical trials of combinations of DNA-damaging agents that might best be described as carpet-bombing therapeutics. Great strides were made with these agents in certain diseases such as the hematological malignancies (particularly childhood leukemia), Hodgkin's lymphoma, and the malignancies of the head and neck, colorectum, ovaries and testes and, to a certain extent, breast cancer. But the major epithelial cancers, including lung, colon and prostate, remain largely recalcitrant. Melanomas, pancreatic, hepatic, and brain cancers and most sarcomas are also generally unresponsive, while the toxic/therapeutic ratios of the broadly active carpet-bombing drugs are problematic. A new paradigm is sorely needed.
Source: PubMed Central
Author: David G Nathan
Institution: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W128120988