Tumor Therapeutic Modes

Abstract

Cancer, also known as a malignant tumor, has become one of the top burdens of disease for few decades, and it’s also the second lethal cause globally. With extensive efforts of oncology researches and clinical trials in the modern era, scientists have developed numbers of therapeutic approaches in the treatment of cancer. In this chapter, we introduce the existing conventional cancer therapeutic methods in two categories, the traditional cancer treatments and the novel tumor therapeutic modes. The former includes surgery, radiotherapy, hormone therapy, chemotherapy, and stem cell transplant, and the latter involves immunotherapy, targeted therapy, and gene therapy. We first give a brief introduction to each therapy from their history to the definition and list several examples for illustration. Then we discuss the combination of each treatment with other cancer therapies and risks of certain remedies. Particularly, we briefly demonstrate the nanomaterials in the application of targeted therapy. Besides, we also state some current obstructions of targeted therapy that needed to be overcome. Finally, there is the introduction of complementary and alternative medicine for the use of antineoplastic therapy, which we provide some information including the overview of some traditional medicine or whole medical systems.