Cancer has been a significant healthcare concern globally and is severely
affecting various populations across continents with 18.1 million new cases and over 9
million deaths in 2018 alone. Several therapeutic approaches have been developed
against various cancers like radiation therapy and cytotoxic chemotherapy to eliminate
the tumor by physical/chemical-mediated damage to rapidly dividing tumor cells. To
some extent, standard cytotoxic therapies have been successful in treating the disease,
but they exhibit severe side effects and pose a threat to other fast-growing noncancerous
cells. The risks associated with cytotoxic chemotherapy like obliteration of
normal rapidly growing cells, induced cytotoxicity, and development of resistance led
to the initiation of efforts to discover novel and effective alternate targeted treatment
modalities. Pragmatic research endeavours have led to the development of a new area
of treatment strategies termed ‘targeted therapies. This approach targets the molecular
mechanism of tumor progression and rationally inhibits the abnormal expression of
involved genes or pathways, exhibits less toxicity, and shows more efficiency as
compared to the traditional treatment regime. This current chapter comprehensively
outlines the requirement and role of targeted molecular therapies in cancer, their types,
mode of action limitations and future scope. It will aid readers to understand the
necessity of alternative treatment modalities in cancer, their effectiveness in contrast to
traditional treatment approaches and the combinatorial effect of both the regimes upon
requirement. The chapter also sketches the challenges and limitation of this approach
and how researchers can overcome them to develop novel, precise and more competent
targeted molecular therapies.
Keywords: Cancer, Cancer Therapeutics, Kinase Inhibitors, Molecular Targets,
Molecular Therapeutics, Molecular Drugs, Small Molecules, Targeted Molecular
therapy.
