The "biomissile" of cancer treatment, do you know targeted drugs

You may be familiar with cancer. This kind of disease that people talk about is still a difficult problem in the medical field, and scientists from all over the world have never stopped researching it. Although there is no complete cure for advanced cancer, there are still many ways to treat cancer, including radiotherapy, chemotherapy, targeted therapy, and more. Compared with chemotherapy drugs with larger side effects, targeted drugs have the advantages of stronger specificity, easier accumulation in the tumor area, and fewer side effects. Next, let's talk about targeted drugs for the treatment of cancer.

Targeted drugs, as the name suggests, target specific targets on tumor cells, such as certain unique genetic mutations. Compared with chemotherapy, targeted drugs only inhibit tumor cells without causing significant damage to normal cells, so the side effects are much smaller. If chemotherapeutic drugs are "explosive packs" that are indistinguishable between ourselves and the enemy, then targeted drugs are "bio-missiles" that are discerning.

According to the different modes of action and molecular size, targeted drugs are mainly divided into two categories: small molecule compounds and macromolecular monoclonal antibody drugs. Small-molecule drugs, also known as "xxtinib", enter tumor cells and bind to specific substances to play a role. These drugs are easy to synthesize, have a short half-life, and need to be taken orally every day. Common ones include gefitinib, erlotinib, sorafenib, imatinib (Gleevec), and sunitinib.

Macromolecular drugs are our common "xx monoclonal antibodies". This is illustrated with the help of "tracking missiles" in modern warfare, where a tracking missile on a modern battlefield locks onto a target and attacks it based on the target's radiation or signal reflections. In the battlefield of the human body, what does the "tracking missile" rely on to attack the "enemy"? That is the corresponding gene mutations, and specific molecular targets required for tumor growth, and so on. These drugs are highly targeted and have a long half-life and require intravenous administration. Common rituximab, trastuzumab, cetuximab and bevacizumab and so on.

Although targeted drugs are invincible, they also have certain limitations. First, their specificity limits their scope of action. Before using a targeted drug, the corresponding gene must be detected, and the patient must have a clear therapeutic target and already have a specific drug for the target before targeted drug therapy can be performed. Taking breast cancer as an example, breast cancer is divided into three types, and only HER2-positive breast cancer can be treated with molecular targeted therapy.

At present, most molecular targeted therapy is mainly used for advanced cancer patients, and some cancer targeted drugs can be used as early first-line treatment drugs, such as chronic myeloid leukemia, whose first-line treatment drugs are molecular targeted drugs such as imatinib . For some patients with malignant tumors, even if they have undergone radical surgery, although the mass has disappeared, molecularly targeted drugs may be used as an adjuvant method to eliminate the remaining tumor cells.

Modern research shows that tumor cells evolve rapidly, and it is easy to evolve new genes and functions to evade the attack of targeted drugs, that is, to develop drug resistance, which leads to a high rate of cancer recurrence. At the same time, because targeted drugs need to interact with targets on cancer cells to exert their efficacy, this requires more stringent medication requirements. Unscientific and unreasonable medication may cause more side effects than traditional chemotherapy.

Compared with other drugs, targeted drugs have the characteristics of high efficiency and low toxicity. Although not every cancer currently has targeted drugs, it is believed that through the continuous efforts of scientific researchers, targeted drugs to treat cancer or even cure most cancers will be an extremely common phenomenon one day in the future!