The Quest for new Therapies
Radiotherapy today is an important therapeutic tool for the treatment of different kinds of cancer. It is estimated that about two-thirds of all cancer patients will receive Radiotherapy as unique treatment or as a part of the more complex therapeutic protocol.
It took many decades of research and development to reach this stage.
Correspondingly, it took chemotherapy from 1940 to 1980, to become a standard therapy alongside surgery and radiation. Cancer treatment methods have improved over time. Nowadays (2017) 5-year survival is around 65% for all cancers combined. This means that among people with cancer, the likelihood of not surviving five years after diagnosis was 35% of the expectancy for the overall population. We are all part of the quest for new therapies in oncology.
Cancer therapy has been improved over time based on better understanding of the science of cancer allowing to stratify of clinical approaches and therapeutic objectives.
The most common types of cancer treatments applied today consist of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
More recent treatments are angiogenesis inhibitor therapy, biological therapies, bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cell transplantation, laser therapy, photodynamic therapy and targeted cancer therapies.
Thermotherapy is demonstrating positive clinical results in treatments combined with Radiotherapy.