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Concept
Experimental cancer treatment
Summary
Experimental cancer treatments are mainstream medical therapies intended to treat cancer by improving on, supplementing or replacing conventional methods (surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy). However, researchers are still trying to determine whether these treatments are safe and effective treatments. Experimental cancer treatments are normally available only to people who participate in formal research programs, which are called clinical trials. Occasionally, a seriously ill person may be able to access an experimental drug through an expanded access program. Some of the treatments have regulatory approval for treating other conditions. Health insurance and publicly funded health care programs normally refuse to pay for experimental cancer treatments.
The entries listed below vary between theoretical therapies to unproven controversial therapies. Many of these treatments are alleged to help against only specific forms of cancer. It is not a list of treatments widely available at hospitals.
Drug discovery
The twin goals of research are to determine whether the treatment actually works (called efficacy) and whether it is sufficiently safe. Regulatory processes attempt to balance the potential benefits with the potential harms, so that people given the treatment are more likely to benefit from it than to be harmed by it.
Medical research for cancer begins much like research for any disease. In organized studies of new treatments for cancer, the pre-clinical development of drugs, devices, and techniques begins in laboratories, either with isolated cells or in small animals, most commonly rats or mice. In other cases, the proposed treatment for cancer is already in use for some other medical condition, in which case more is known about its safety and potential efficacy.
Clinical trials are the study of treatments in humans. The first-in-human tests of a potential treatment are called Phase I studies.
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Related publications (112)
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Related units (5)
Related concepts (4)
Hyperthermia therapy
Hyperthermia therapy (or hyperthermia, or thermotherapy) is a type of medical treatment in which body tissue is exposed to temperatures above body temperature, in the region of 40–45 °C (104–113 °F). Hyperthermia is usually applied as an adjuvant to radiotherapy or chemotherapy, to which it works as a sensitizer, in an effort to treat cancer. Hyperthermia uses higher temperatures than diathermy and lower temperatures than ablation. When combined with radiation therapy, it can be called thermoradiotherapy.
Alternative cancer treatments
Alternative cancer treatment describes any cancer treatment or practice that is not part of the conventional standard of cancer care. These include special diets and exercises, chemicals, herbs, devices, and manual procedures. Most alternative cancer treatments do not have high-quality evidence supporting their use and many have been described as fundamentally pseudoscientific. Concerns have been raised about the safety of some purported treatments and some have been found unsafe in clinical trials.
Radiation therapy
Radiation therapy or radiotherapy, often abbreviated RT, RTx, or XRT, is a therapy using ionizing radiation, generally provided as part of cancer treatment to control or kill malignant cells and normally delivered by a linear accelerator. Radiation therapy may be curative in a number of types of cancer if they are localized to one area of the body. It may also be used as part of adjuvant therapy, to prevent tumor recurrence after surgery to remove a primary malignant tumor (for example, early stages of breast cancer).