DefinedHealth

Jeffrey M. Bockman, PhD.

While targeted agents have become central to most cancer drug development discussions, chemotherapeutics, used in combination, are likely to remain a mainstay of future drug regimens. In addition, while both targeted therapies and conventional cytotoxic agents used alone or in combination can quite meaningfully improve outcomes for a subset of patients, for the majority of patients on these regimens there is no improvement. While these failures are often pinned on the chemo agent, targeted therapies may sport a false halo of efficacy, as evidenced by the failure rates of Herceptin and Gleevec, for example.

Considering the narrow therapeutic index for many cancer chemotherapeutic agents, the ability to better predict response and potentially life-threatening toxic effects is critical. This Defined Health Insight Briefing will attempt to regard targeted therapies in a more realistic light, to reconsider the stature of the lately “dissed” conventional chemotherapies, and to do so within an overall perspective of the growing understanding of the pharmacogenetics of tumor, patient and drug.