Targeted Therapy

Targeted therapy or Molecularly targeted therapy is a type of medication that blocks the growth of cancer cells by interfering with specific targeted molecules needed for carcinogenesis and tumor growth, rather than by simply interfering with all rapidly dividing cells (e.g. with traditional chemotherapy). Radiotherapy is not considered a 'targeted therapy' despite it being often aimed at the tumours.

Targeted cancer therapies are expected to be more effective than current treatments and less harmful to normal cells.

There are targeted therapies for breast cancer, multiple myeloma, lymphoma, prostate cancer, melanoma and other cancers.

The definitive experiments that showed that targeted therapy would reverse the malignant phenotype of tumor cells involved treating Her2/neu transformed cells with monoclonal antibodies in vitro and in vivo by Mark Greene’s laboratory and reported from 1985.

Some have challenged use of the term, stating that drugs usually associated with the term are insufficiently selective. The phrase occasionally appears in scare quotes.