What are some of the most promising new treatments for cancer?
Twentieth-century treatments for cancer – which relied mostly on poisoning tumours through chemotherapy or burning them away with radiation – remain the major weapons in our arsenal. But newer, more sophisticated treatments are starting, slowly, to make an impact. These include: “Small-molecule” drugs that interfere with the signals inside cancer cells. One such drug is Glivec (Gleevec in the US), or imatinib, which targets abnormal proteins that instruct cancer cells to grow. Glivec is used to treat one type of leukaemia and a rare tumour of the gut.
Twentieth-century treatments for cancer – which relied mostly on poisoning tumours through chemotherapy or burning them away with radiation – remain the major weapons in our arsenal. But newer, more sophisticated treatments are starting, slowly, to make an impact. These include: “Small-molecule” drugs that interfere with the signals inside cancer cells. One such drug is Glivec (Gleevec in the US), or imatinib, which targets abnormal proteins that instruct cancer cells to grow. Glivec is used to treat one type of leukaemia and a rare tumour of the gut. A compound called 17AAG, which is in UK trials with people with malignant melanoma and a range of other tumours. 17AAG works by stopping a protein called Hsp90 from working. Drugs that tell cancer cells to commit suicide, or apoptose. One, called Velcade or bortezomib, is approved in the US for people with a type of cancer called multiple myeloma. Drugs that block the growth of new blood vessels around a tumour, so that the tumour starves
