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Tumor biology and cancer therapy – an evolving relationship
The aim of palliative chemotherapy is to increase survival whilst maintaining maximum quality of life for the individual concerned. Although we are still continuing to explore the optimum use of traditional chemotherapy agents, the introduction of targeted therapies has significantly broadened the t...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2009
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2731766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19678929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1478-811X-7-19 |
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author | Seufferlein, Thomas Ahn, Johann Krndija, Denis Lother, Ulrike Adler, Guido von Wichert, Götz |
author_facet | Seufferlein, Thomas Ahn, Johann Krndija, Denis Lother, Ulrike Adler, Guido von Wichert, Götz |
author_sort | Seufferlein, Thomas |
collection | PubMed |
description | The aim of palliative chemotherapy is to increase survival whilst maintaining maximum quality of life for the individual concerned. Although we are still continuing to explore the optimum use of traditional chemotherapy agents, the introduction of targeted therapies has significantly broadened the therapeutic options. Interestingly, the results from current trials put the underlying biological concept often into a new, less favorable perspective. Recent data suggested that altered pathways underlie cancer, and not just altered genes. Thus, an effective therapeutic agent will sometimes have to target downstream parts of a signaling pathway or physiological effects rather than individual genes. In addition, over the past few years increasing evidence has suggested that solid tumors represent a very heterogeneous group of cells with different susceptibility to cancer therapy. Thus, since therapeutic concepts and pathophysiological understanding are continuously evolving a combination of current concepts in tumor therapy and tumor biology is needed. This review aims to present current problems of cancer therapy by highlighting exemplary results from recent clinical trials with colorectal and pancreatic cancer patients and to discuss the current understanding of the underlying reasons. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2731766 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2009 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-27317662009-08-26 Tumor biology and cancer therapy – an evolving relationship Seufferlein, Thomas Ahn, Johann Krndija, Denis Lother, Ulrike Adler, Guido von Wichert, Götz Cell Commun Signal Review The aim of palliative chemotherapy is to increase survival whilst maintaining maximum quality of life for the individual concerned. Although we are still continuing to explore the optimum use of traditional chemotherapy agents, the introduction of targeted therapies has significantly broadened the therapeutic options. Interestingly, the results from current trials put the underlying biological concept often into a new, less favorable perspective. Recent data suggested that altered pathways underlie cancer, and not just altered genes. Thus, an effective therapeutic agent will sometimes have to target downstream parts of a signaling pathway or physiological effects rather than individual genes. In addition, over the past few years increasing evidence has suggested that solid tumors represent a very heterogeneous group of cells with different susceptibility to cancer therapy. Thus, since therapeutic concepts and pathophysiological understanding are continuously evolving a combination of current concepts in tumor therapy and tumor biology is needed. This review aims to present current problems of cancer therapy by highlighting exemplary results from recent clinical trials with colorectal and pancreatic cancer patients and to discuss the current understanding of the underlying reasons. BioMed Central 2009-08-13 /pmc/articles/PMC2731766/ /pubmed/19678929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1478-811X-7-19 Text en Copyright © 2009 Seufferlein et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Review Seufferlein, Thomas Ahn, Johann Krndija, Denis Lother, Ulrike Adler, Guido von Wichert, Götz Tumor biology and cancer therapy – an evolving relationship |
title | Tumor biology and cancer therapy – an evolving relationship |
title_full | Tumor biology and cancer therapy – an evolving relationship |
title_fullStr | Tumor biology and cancer therapy – an evolving relationship |
title_full_unstemmed | Tumor biology and cancer therapy – an evolving relationship |
title_short | Tumor biology and cancer therapy – an evolving relationship |
title_sort | tumor biology and cancer therapy – an evolving relationship |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2731766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19678929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1478-811X-7-19 |
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