Targeted Cancer Therapy: The Next Generation of Cancer Treatment

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the United States along with heart disease. The hallmark of cancer treatment has been conventional chemotherapy. Chemotherapeutic drugs are designed to target not only rapidly dividing cells, such as cancer cells, but also certain normal cells, such as intestinal epithelium. Over the past several years, a new generation of cancer treatment has come to the forefront, i.e, targeted cancer therapies. Like conventional chemotherapy, targeted cancer therapies use pharmacological agents that inhibit growth, increase cell death and restrict the spread of cancer. As the name suggests, targeted therapies interfere with specific proteins involved in tumorigenesis. Rather…