RT Book, Section A1 Chen, Eric A1 Tannock, Ian F. A2 Harrington, Lea A. A2 Tannock, Ian F. A2 Hill, Richard P. A2 Cescon, David W. SR Print(0) ID 1179325526 T1 Anticancer Chemotherapy, Pharmacology, and Mechanisms of Resistance T2 The Basic Science of Oncology, 6e YR 2021 FD 2021 PB McGraw-Hill Education PP New York, NY SN 9781259862076 LK accessbiomedicalscience.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1179325526 RD 2024/03/29 AB Although most new drugs for cancer are agents that target molecular changes that occur in tumors (described in Chap. 19), chemotherapy still provides the backbone of drug therapy for most types of cancer. Chemotherapy is used commonly to treat people with metastatic cancer, and for many common types of adult cancer can provide palliation—either by prolonging survival and/or by improving quality of life. Only for relatively rare tumors such as childhood leukemia and some other cancers affecting children, and testicular cancer in men, can chemotherapy cure metastatic disease. Chemotherapy (and other systemic treatments) are also used either before (neoadjuvant) or after (adjuvant) surgery (and sometimes before, with, or after radiotherapy) in people without overt spread of disease, and can then improve the probability of cure by eliminating undetectable micrometastases.