Drug Combination in Cancer Treatment—From Cocktails to Conjugated Combinations

摘要

Chemotherapy is a key modality in today’s practice of clinical oncology. The potential for systemic treatment of cancer patients with cytotoxic agents was discovered in the mid 20th century and its major shortcomings namely, off target toxicity and resistance to treatment, were apparent from the very beginning. These limitations pushed the scientific and medical communities to search for improvements, which as a final result, shaping modern research and clinical practice in the field. For minimizing off target toxic effects, drug discovery efforts became more focused on targeted therapies and on combinations of anti-cancer drugs in order to overcome the resistance problem. Here we outline the evolution of chemotherapy from its beginning as a single-agent based therapy to poly-drug treatment that involves targeted drugs, and discuss the concept of drug-conjugation based treatment as a strategy for further optimization of treatment regimes.