Theory and Practice of Clinical Pharmacodynamics in Oncology Drug Development

The discovery that biochemical abnormalities in signaling pathways are the cause of human malignancies led to the concept, design, and development of “targeted agents” —drugs designed and developed for specific control of the molecular defect responsible for the abnormal signaling. In cancers in which somatic mutations create abnormal dependencies upon signaling pathways for survival (e.g., “oncogene addiction” [1,2] and “network-atta cking mutations” [3]), abnormal molecular signaling provides a tumor-specific target not found (or needed) in healthy tissues, and therefore the therapeutic index of targeted therapy should be higher than that of cytotoxic chemotherapy.

Source: Seminars in Oncology - July 26, 2016 Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Ralph E. Parchment, James H. Doroshow Source Type: research