Gan to kagaku ryoho. Cancer & chemotherapy
-
Combination therapy with platinum preparations still occupies a central position in chemotherapy for lung cancer. Third-generation regimens that combine an anticancer drug and a platinum preparation that were published in the 1990s remain standard therapy for untreated non-small-cell lung cancer today. Cisplatin or carboplatin is used as the platinum preparation, but combination therapy with cisplatin has been found to have a greater antitumor effect than combination therapy with carboplatin. ⋯ EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors have been demonstrated to have a very high cytoreductive effect on lung cancers that have EGFR gene mutations. The frequency of EGFR gene mutations is high in East Asia, including Japan, whereas it is very low in Western countries. Thus, the future course of development of chemotherapy for non-small-cell lung cancer may differ in Western countries and Asia, and the method of using EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors is expected to have great implications in Asia.
-
Although medical treatment for advanced renal cell carcinoma has included cytokine therapies such as interferon and interleukin-2, the treatment system has been revolutionized with the emergence of molecular target medicine. A vascular endothelial growth factor and its receptor for the target molecule are the mainstream, but the efficacy of inhibitors of an alternate pathway has been established. It seems that even newer molecular target medicine will be introduced in the future, but the optimal medicine based on the individual condition must be provided in renal cell carcinoma cases.