RT Book, Section A1 Wellstein, Anton A2 Brunton, Laurence L. A2 Hilal-Dandan, Randa A2 Knollmann, Björn C. SR Print(0) ID 1162546374 T1 General Principles in the Pharmacotherapy of Cancer T2 Goodman & Gilman's: The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, 13e YR 2017 FD 2017 PB McGraw-Hill Education PP New York, NY SN 9781259584732 LK hemonc.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1162546374 RD 2024/03/28 AB Cancer pharmacology has changed dramatically during the recent past with the improved understanding of cancer biology and an ever-expanding set of newly developed drugs that target vulnerabilities in individual cancers. Effective early treatments have been developed for some fatal malignancies, including testicular cancer, lymphomas, and leukemia. Also, adjuvant chemotherapy and hormonal therapy can extend overall survival and prevent disease recurrence following surgical resection of localized breast, colorectal, and lung cancers. Chemotherapy is also employed as part of the multimodal treatment of locally advanced head and neck, breast, lung, and esophageal cancers; soft-tissue sarcomas; and pediatric solid tumors, thereby allowing for surgery that is more limited with favorable outcomes (Chabner and Roberts, 2005). In the past 5 years, the ability to harness the power of the immune system in the treatment of cancer has brought about a paradigm shift whereby some of the most feared diseases, such as melanoma and lung cancer and even late-stage metastatic disease, can be eradicated. For some cancers, response rates are surprisingly high: 87% in Hodgkin lymphoma even in heavily pretreated patients (Ansell et al., 2015), and 50% in patients with metastatic melanoma treated with combinations of PD-1 and CTLA4 immune checkpoint antibodies. Immune checkpoint inhibitors are currently approved for the treatment of bladder cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, kidney cancer, lung cancer, and melanoma; more approvals are anticipated in the near future based on several hundred ongoing clinical trials.