New Drugs, Better Treatments Lessen Side Effects of Cancer Care

Extract

A quarter of a century ago, the aim of cancer care was simply to cure the patient with little concern about the side effects of the treatment. But better understanding of the causes of side effects and development of better drugs to counteract chemotherapy’s side effects have helped lessen the adverse reactions to treatment.

Nausea and vomiting, the major side effect of cancer treatment, is frequently absent as new drugs are added to chemotherapy regimens. At the recent International Congress on Anti-Cancer Treatments in Paris, Richard Gralla, M.D., director of clinical research at the Columbia University-New York Hospital, noted during a session on lung cancer that “there were many different regimens presented here today, and 85% to 90% of them had little or no nausea. I think we’ve come a long way.”

Gralla said that a new class of agents, the tachykinin neurokinin NK1 receptor antagonists, are promising in this respect. Now, ondansetron and granisetron are most often used to try to keep seasick feelings at bay.