Pharmacologic Treatment of Cancer: New Developments

In this issue of Cancer Control, five reviews address the current state of the art for the pharmacologic treatment of cancer. For centuries, surgery was considered the only curative treatment for cancer. Likewise, radiation therapy offered some patients a possible cure for cancers that were localized. However, once the disease spread from its original site of origin, the patient was deemed inoperable and therefore incurable. This self-fulfilling prophecy remained true until the development of systemic therapy that addressed not only localized disease, but also disease that had spread to distant sites. Cytotoxic drugs represent the most commonly used treatment for cancers that have metastasized, although hormones can have a major impact in diseases such as breast and prostate cancer.