Question

In this course, we, from time to time, talk about the use of so-called “targeted” anticancer therapies. These therapies are designed to target some specific aspect of the biology of the tumor that is different vs. normal, non-transformed cells. Such therapies, like farnesyltransferase inhibitors, Herceptin, etc. should theoretically speaking, provide the advantage of selectively neutralizing/killing tumors without adversely affecting non-cancerous cells in the body. This would, ideally, result in the elimination of cancer (i.e., effect a “cure”) with very few side-effects in the patient. The reality, however, is quite different. On a general level, provide two (2) possible reasons why such targeted therapies have not yielded better outcomes in patients who receive these drugs. For your answer, list each reason with a sentence or two explaining why targeted therapies rarely provide a cure in the battle against cancer.

Answer 1

The two causes may be ..

1)Resistant to the targeted therapy because tumour cells can be killed after one targeted therapy but after that the cells become resistant to the therapy by mutation and multiple mutations is acquired and then more cells become resistant and these therapy become failed.

2)finding of target is very difficult because the target should be specific for tumour cells only not for all cells if the target is not so specific then other cells of the body will get these medicine and this will kill the normal cells as well as cancerous cells.

This is very bad side effects.

And the very specific target finding is very channelging.

Thank you