Target therapy, a new form of chemotherapy that targets the molecules that feed tumor growth, is attracting increasing attention in the medical world, doctors said at a conference on colorectal cancer in Taipei yesterday.
Annual statistics released by the Department of Health show that colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer deaths and affects 60,000 people in Taiwan.
Last year, more than 4,000 people died from colorectal cancer, representing more than 11 percent of all deaths from cancer.
Hepatic metastasis, or the transfer of cancerous cells from the colon or rectum to the liver, “accounts for the vast majority of deaths from colorectal cancer,” said Jiang Jeng-kai (姜正愷), head of the department of colorectal surgery at Taipei Veterans General Hospital.
Jiang was one of 150 doctors who attended the 2008 Autumn Meeting of the Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons yesterday.
Patients with colorectal cancer that has transferred to the liver can rarely be cured, doctors said. But an increasing body of data indicates that neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy, which reduces the size of a tumor prior to surgery, improves overall survival rates, because it allows patients with liver metastasis to undergo surgery.
“Recent analyses show that ... patients with initially irresectable colorectal cancer [tumors that cannot be removed through surgery] who received downsizing chemotherapy had higher five and 10-year survival rates,” said Huang Lin-chieh (黃麟傑) of the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center’s division of hematology and medical oncology.
Chiang Jy-ming (江支銘) of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s colorectal division said that developing target therapy has been a key trend.
In contrast to traditional chemotherapy, target therapy inhibits tumor growth by focusing on the molecules that tumors need to spread, which not only effectively kills cancer cells, but also decreases side effects.
“This form of therapy is very expensive as only selected forms of target therapy are covered by National Health Insurance,” he said. “Early detection is still key.”
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