Surgical treatmentSurgical treatment is the oldest method of cancer treatment, and it is still the most effective treatment for many cancers, and about 60% of cancers are mainly treated by surgery. Surgery is becoming more and more sophisticated, and increasing attention is being paid to the biological concept of surgery, focusing on the impact of surgical modalities on the tumor and the patient's ratio, and advocating the maintenance of the patient's quality of life.
Radiation therapy uses high-energy particles or rays, such as x-rays or gamma rays, to kill cancer cells. Radiation therapy has made significant progress in mechanism research, equipment and efficacy. The widespread use of gas pedals and the development of conformal intensity-modulated radiotherapy techniques have increased the indications for radiotherapy, improved its efficacy and reduced the damage to normal tissues.
Chemotherapy refers to the use of chemical drugs to treat cancer. Chemotherapy is one of the fastest growing fields in tumor diagnosis and treatment, and a large number of new drugs for different targets are beginning to be applied in the clinic. Advances in the study of the mechanism of action of drugs and pharmacokinetics have also made the clinical route and method of drug delivery more suitable for killing tumor cells and protecting normal tissues.
Hormone therapy refers to the use of drugs to inhibit hormone production and hormone response, or the use of surgery to remove hormone-producing glands to kill cancer cells or inhibit the growth of cancer cells.
Biological therapy (immunotherapy and gene therapy)
Biological therapy has flourished in recent years, and although the technology itself needs to be improved and the efficacy of the treatment needs to be enhanced, there is already hope.
Future breakthroughs in tumor treatment will likely depend on the development of novel drugs and the maturation of gene therapy.
With the elucidation of the molecular mechanism of tumor development, the difference between tumor cells and normal cells will become clearer, and some molecular targets specific to tumor cells will become a useful tool for the screening of potent anticancer drugs, which may specifically attack the tumor cells and cause little damage to the normal cells, and thus have a better therapeutic efficacy, and can be used in the clinic at high doses over a longer period of time.
Gene therapy also has a broad application prospect because it can repair or promote the death of tumor cells by targeting the specific genetic variations in tumor tissues; in particular, with the successful construction of some highly efficient and tissue/cell-selective drug delivery vectors, and the discovery of some new and more lethal target genes, gene therapy may become a routine means of tumor treatment in the 21st century.