milotom
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Posts:6
Hi all, thankyou for your help with my last question.Being new to the site, now that I have another question I was unsure whether to keep going with the original post or, as my new question is on a different subject, to start a new post. I (obviously) went with the latter...
My understanding is that the drug Tarceva is known as a targeted drug therapy and is part of the new wave of personalised cancer therapy. Some friends I have been talking to in relation to my husband's cancer refer to Tarceva as chemotherapy, or oral chemotherapy. For some reason it bugs me when they say this (perhaps it feels like they haven't been listening to me). Are they the same thing or is my understanding, that they are quite different, correct?
Thanks
Forums
Reply # - October 16, 2013, 07:52 PM
Reply To: Is targeted drug therapy the same as chemotherapy?
Your right that standard chemo and targeted drugs are very different though when I started my education into cancer treatment 4 1/2 years ago I didn't know the difference between chemo and radiation. I've learned that most people aren't interested in having that in-depth of a conversation; even some people who are getting that treatment don't want to go into that much detail.
Dr. Weiss describes here, "Most cells in the human body do not divide. In contrast, cancer cells frequently divide in order to grow. While dividing, they must copy their DNA, the genetic material of the cell. In some form, all of these drugs work by poisining the process of DNA replication, thus killing dividing cells. Drugs that work by this mechanism are called “cytotoxic” chemotherapy. Since most of the cells dividing in the cancer patient’s body will be the cancer cells, the chemotherapy is preferentially poisonous to these bad cells, leaving most of the non-dividing normal body cells alone. However, certain cells in the body do divide, causing side-effects in these areas (for example, the cells lining the gut causing nausea, and the cells in the bone-marrow causing low blood counts).
"In contrast (to) cytotoxic chemotherapy, biologic (targeted) agents do not work by damaging the DNA of dividing cells. They work by targeting signaling within the cancer cell. The first targeted agent was imatinib, or gleevec, an extremely effective drug for CML; it was approved in 2001. Herceptin was the first targeted antibody (for some breast cancer), with bevacizumab following in 2004 (now a therapy for multiple cancer types)", http://cancergrace.org/lung/2010/04/16/introduction-to-first-line-thera…
Starting a new thread is appropriate when changing subjects.
All best,
Janine
forum moderator
Reply # - October 16, 2013, 07:59 PM
Reply To: Is targeted drug therapy the same as chemotherapy?
Thanks Janine
How about the terminology? Is it correct to label targeted drugs such as Tarceva as "chemotherapy" or are they termed "targeted drug therapy?"
Reply # - October 16, 2013, 09:54 PM
Reply To: Is targeted drug therapy the same as chemotherapy?
It's such a new subject I don't know if it's a moving target but I believe there's a difference in terminology. Chemo are the cytotoxic drugs as described in Dr. Weiss' blog post and biologic/targeted drugs seem to be using the term "targeted" drug therapy/treatment.
Reply # - October 17, 2013, 04:52 AM
Reply To: Is targeted drug therapy the same as chemotherapy?
Yes. Chemotherapy is often termed as "cytotoxic" or "standard" or "conventional" chemotherapy in distinction to "targeted" therapies like those directed against EGFR, ALK, or some other specifically identified molecular target.
-Dr. West