Cancer

Treatment
Strategies

Ms. MASEKO
• Cancer treatment includes surgery, radiation,
medicines and other therapies. The goal of cancer
treatment is to cure or shrink a cancer or stop it
from spreading.
• Many cancer treatments exist. Patients may receive
one treatment or a combination of treatments. Their
cancer treatment plan may be based on the type of
cancer and the situation.
 Treatment options
1. Surgery.
• The goal of surgery is to remove the cancer or as much of
the cancer as possible.
2. Chemotherapy.
• Chemotherapy treats cancer with strong medicines. Many
chemotherapy medicines exist. Most chemotherapy
medicines are given through a vein. Some come in pill
form.
3. Radiation therapy.
• Radiation therapy treats cancer with powerful
energy beams. The energy can come from X-rays,
protons or other sources.
• Most often, the radiation comes from a machine
that directs the treatment to precise points on the
body.
• This is called external beam radiation.
Sometimes the radiation is placed inside the body
to treat the cancer. This type of radiation is called
brachytherapy.
4. Bone marrow transplant.
• A bone marrow transplant, also called a bone
marrow stem cell transplant, involves putting
healthy bone marrow stem cells into the body.
• These cells replace cells damaged by
chemotherapy and other treatments.
5. Immunotherapy.
• Immunotherapy for cancer is a treatment with
medicine that helps the body's immune system to
kill cancer cells. The immune system fights off
diseases by attacking germs and other cells that
shouldn't be in the body. Cancer cells survive by
hiding from the immune system. Immunotherapy
helps the immune system cells find and kill the
cancer cells.
6. Hormone therapy.
• Some types of cancer are fueled by the body's
hormones. Hormone therapy treatments remove
those hormones from the body or block their
effects in order to stop the cancer cells from
growing.
7. Targeted therapy.
• Targeted therapy for cancer is a treatment that
uses medicines that attack specific chemicals in
the cancer cells. By blocking these chemicals,
targeted treatment can cause cancer cells to die.
8. Cryoablation.
• Cryoablation is a treatment that kills cancer cells with
cold.
9. Radiofrequency ablation.
• Radiofrequency ablation treatment uses electrical energy
to heat cancer cells, causing them to die.
10. Clinical trials.
• Clinical trials are studies of new treatments. These studies
provide a chance to try the latest treatments. The risk of
side effects might not be known. Patients need to ask the
healthcare team if they might be able to be in a clinical
trial.
 Cancer resistance to
chemotherapy
• Chemotherapy resistance occurs when cancers that
have been responding to a therapy suddenly begin to
grow.
• In other words, the cancer cells are resisting the
effects of the chemotherapy. You may hear
statements like the "cancer chemotherapy failed."
When this occurs, the drugs will need to be changed.
 Several possible reasons for
chemotherapy resistance:
• Some of the cells that are not killed by the chemotherapy
mutate and become resistant to the drug. Once they
multiply, there may be more resistant cells than cells that
are sensitive to the chemotherapy.
• Gene amplification. A cancer cell may produce
hundreds of copies of a particular gene. This gene
triggers an overproduction of protein that renders the
anticancer drug ineffective.
• Cancer cells may pump the drug out of the cell as fast as
it is going in using a molecule called p-glycoprotein.
• Cancer cells may stop taking in the drugs because
the protein that transports the drug across the
cell wall stops working.
• The cancer cells may learn how to repair the DNA
breaks caused by some anti-cancer drugs.
• Cancer cells may develop a mechanism that
inactivates the drug.
 IMMUNOTHERAPIES
• Biologic Response Modifiers (BRM), also called immunotherapy, is
a type of treatment that mobilizes the body's immune system to fight
cancer. The therapy mainly consists of stimulating the immune
system to help it do its job more effectively. Tumor Vaccines also
work to stimulate the body's immune system.
• BRM - are substances that are able to trigger the immune system to
indirectly affect tumors. These include cytokines such as interferons
and interleukins. This strategy involves giving larger amounts of
these substances by injection or infusion in the hope of stimulating
the cells of the immune system to act more effectively.
 Cancer drug discovery and
development
• Cancer drug discovery and development aim to identify new anti-cancer
drugs and determine the clinical safety and efficacy of these therapies.
• After the lead candidate is identified in various cancer models, phased
evaluations are performed to understand the mechanisms of action,
dose-related toxicity, response rate, and applicable patients .
• Cancer drug development, however, is often associated with high
failure rates, suboptimal efficacies, and long development timelines .
Successful approvals by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are
historically lengthy (over 10 years) and less than 10% of cancer drug
candidates flushing into the phase I trials eventually get approved by
the FDA
 Reference
• https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/cancer-treat
ment/about/pac-20393344
• https://chemocare.com/what-is-chemotherapy/what-is-drug
-resistance
• https://chemocare.com/what-is-chemotherapy/about-immu
notherapy
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxico
logy-and-pharmaceutical-science/cancer-drug-developmen
t