Targeted Therapy

Targeted Therapy

Targeted therapy refers to a class of medications designed to impede the growth of cancer cells by disrupting specific molecules crucial for carcinogenesis and tumor expansion, rather than simply targeting rapidly dividing cells as traditional chemotherapy does. These therapies hold the potential to be more effective against cancer while causing less harm to healthy cells.

The seminal experiments demonstrating the ability of targeted therapy to reverse the malignant behavior of tumor cells involved treating Her2/neu transformed cells with monoclonal antibodies, conducted by Mark Greene’s laboratory, both in vitro and in vivo.

Some critics have questioned the use of the term "targeted therapy," arguing that drugs typically associated with this term lack sufficient selectivity. As a result, the phrase is occasionally used within quotation marks.

Targeted therapy can be categorized into two main groups: small molecules and monoclonal antibodies.

Many oncologists see targeted therapies as the future of chemotherapy. As solid tumor cancer increasingly becomes regarded as a chronic condition, research into long-term treatment methods with fewer side effects continues to progress.

In the United States, the National Cancer Institute's Molecular Targets Development Program (MTDP) is dedicated to identifying and evaluating molecular targets that could potentially be developed into drugs.

The next phase of targeted therapies will involve identifying which patients will respond best to specific targeted therapies. This process, known as identifying "sub-populations," stratified medicine, or personalized medicine, relies on biomarkers and surrogate endpoints for identification.