Fol. Biol. 2012, 58, 1-6
Molecularly-Targeted and Biological Anti-Cancer Therapy
The advent of the new millennium was characterized by emergence of dozens of so-called new anti-tumour drugs that differed in many substantial aspects from the established, so far widely used chemotherapy agents. Along with the entrance of these novel anti-tumour agents into clinical practice several new terms and designations came up as well, including molecular targeted therapy, biological therapy, epigenetic therapy, differentiating therapy, gene therapy, and tailored/individualized/personalized therapy. Unfortunately, not only in the daily news, but also in numerous scientific reports the above-given terms and notions either have been used interchangeably (which in our opinion they are not), or each time their meaning has been interpreted in a more or less different way. As a consequence a substantial part of the current generation of clinical oncologists, who have had limited personal experience in the field of molecular biology, vainly grope for a simple explanation of how to use these terms properly. For this reason we have decided to set up a brief editorial that would provide an unsophisticated review focused on these new anti-cancer agents and treatment approaches, with special focus on the molecular roots from which they have originally stemmed. We expect that the current article will help ordinary clinical oncologists to gain insight into the molecular basis of the modern treatment anti-cancer strategies.
Keywords
targeted therapy, biological therapy, biopharmaceutical, biosimilar, tailored therapy, personalized medicine.
Funding
This work was supported by grants from the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic IGA MZ NS/10287-3, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic MSM 0021620806, MSM 0021620808, and SVV-2010-254260507.
References
Copyright
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
