What is「targeted therapy」?
Targeted therapy is to reduce mutation, proliferation, or spread of cancer cells by blocking the signaling pathways that help cancer cells survive, grow and spread. The endpoint is inhibiting the growth of cancer cells, promoting the death of cancer cells, and preventing the spread of cancer cells. The targeted therapy can more precisely inhibit the growth of cancer cells compared to chemotherapy. Very rarely would patients also have side effects like nausea, vomiting, or hair loss..
In action, targeted therapy can track the targets and destroy them, just like intelligent missiles. Unlike chemotherapy drugs which often kill both normal and cancerous cells that grow and divide quickly, which lead to many side effects, the advantage of targeted therapy is that cells without target expression will not be harmed. Therefore, patients can receive relatively high doses of targeted drugs to achieve better therapeutic effects. However, a single targeted therapeutic modality may not effectively retard the disease progression; hence it is ofetn used in combination with other cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, for better outcomes.
