Targeted therapy is a type of medication that blocks the growth of cancer cells by interfering with specific targeted molecules needed for carcinogenesis and tumor growth, rather than by simply interfering with rapidly dividing cells (eg. with traditional chemotherapy). Targeted cancer therapies may be more effective than current treatments and less harmful to normal cells.
Some have challenged use of the term, stating that drugs usually associat...
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Targeted therapy is a type of medication that blocks the growth of cancer cells by interfering with specific targeted molecules needed for carcinogenesis and tumor growth, rather than by simply interfering with rapidly dividing cells (eg. with traditional chemotherapy). Targeted cancer therapies may be more effective than current treatments and less harmful to normal cells.
Some have challenged use of the term, stating that drugs usually associated with the term are insufficiently selective. The phrase occasionally appears in scare quotes. The definitive experiments that showed that targeted therapy would reverse the malignant phenotype of tumor cells involved treating Her2/neu transformed cells with monoclonal antibodies in vitro and in vivo by Mark Greene’s laboratory.
The main categories of targeted therapy are small molecules and monoclonal antibodies.
Several are in development and a few have been licenced by the FDA. Examples of licenced monoclonal antibodies include:
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