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New frontiers in cancer therapy

“Targeted therapy’ has been gaining priority in the treatment of cancer in the past two to three years. The treatment followed now can well be described as revolutionary since targeted therapy focusses only on abnormal cells, and not normal cells, unlike chemotherapy. Most importantly, the patient is less traumatised, from powerful side-effects,” Narayanankutty Varier, oncologist and former Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at Government Medical College Hospital, Kozhikode, said.

In a chat with The Hindu here on Sunday, Dr. Varier, who is senior consultant and Head of the Oncology Department of the Malabar Institute of Medical Sciences, dwelt on the changing perspective in treatment of different cancers, with focus on drugs with fewer side-effects.

He said of late, there was a change from conventional treatment that included long period of hospitalisation. Earlier, chemotherapy was the mode of treatment. It had powerful side-effects and the patient had a traumatic experience.

The huge positive now was that the treatment had fewer side-effects such as hair loss, vomiting and tiredness.

The drugs were available in tablet form and the patient could be treated at home. All this could be viewed as a major breakthrough, Dr. Varier said.

In some types of lung cancer, for instance, the new drug gefitinib was now available and treatment could be carried on at home. The side-effects were few and the patient could do routine work, he said.

In cases of kidney and liver cancer, of which even 15 per cent could not be treated earlier, a new era had emerged. “We doctors now say we can try. There is hope of improvement of the patient,” Dr. Varier said.

The sunitinib group of drugs that acted only on cancer cells was being administered in cases of kidney cancer and sorafenib in those of liver cancer.

Treatment had been revolutionised and provided plenty of hope to those affected by the disease.

He said monoclonal antibodies also formed part of targeted therapy. Here, only the tumour cells were killed and normal cells were not affected.

There were no side-effects such as lessening of the blood count.

A combined regimen of targeted therapy and chemotherapy was also administered and the response of patients to treatment doubled.

The third group of drugs, angiogenesis, was highly effective in combating the development of secondaries.

The drug was combined with chemotherapy and the results were encouraging, he said.

MALEEHA RAGHAVIAH

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