Targeted drugs work differently from chemotherapy drugs, which attack all rapidly growing cells, including cancer cells. Targeted drugs attack only cancer cells and have fewer side effects than chemotherapy.
Cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy affect healthy cells too, without distinguishing healthy cells from cancer cells. Because of this property of chemotherapy, healthy cells are also harmed by the procedure. The damage caused by treatment in healthy cells leads to complications and side effects.
Targeted therapies are designed only to destroy cancer cells, to reduce damage to healthy cells and to minimize the side effects that negatively affect the patient’s quality of life.
With antibodies and smart molecules that act directly on the cancerous cell, the side effects created by chemotherapy in treatment decrease, and may not occur at all.
In about one in 5 women with breast cancer, the cancer cells have a receptor protein on their surface, known as HER-2, that encourages the cancer to grow (HER2; human epidermal growth factor receptor 2). HER2-positive breast cancers grow more aggressively and tend to spread.
In this group of patients, chemotherapy and hormonal treatments alone may be insufficient. When smart drugs developed to silence these receptors, such as “Herceptin, Tykerb, Perjeta”, are given together, they increase the effect of chemotherapy and hormonal treatment.
Besides fulfilling the purpose of a tumor-specific drug, these treatments will also be able to reduce to a minimum the side effects, which are the biggest problem of cancer treatment. In a not very long time, the effectiveness and field of use of tumor-/person-specific treatment methods with smart drugs in the treatment of breast cancer are expected to expand even further.
