Receiving a cancer diagnosis can feel overwhelming for you and your loved ones. It helps to know that you have a number of treatment options, no matter what type and stage of cancer you have.

Your care team combines cancer experts in several fields. Together, they will recommend treatment options based on your specific diagnosis. They will discuss these options with you and ask about your personal goals, to help you decide on a treatment plan.

Different types of treatment for cancer have different goals, such as:

• Slowing or stopping the growth of cancer
• Destroying cancer cells
• Destroying any cancer cells that may have spread (metastasized) to other areas of the body
• Delaying or preventing cancer from coming back (recurrence)
• Managing symptoms of incurable cancer

Drug therapy uses medications that travel throughout the body to target cancer cells wherever they are found.

Drug therapy, also known as systemic therapy, refers to several types of medication that travel through the bloodstream to attack cancer cells anywhere in the body. You can receive drug therapy orally as a pill or intravenously through an injection or infusion into a vein, or as an injection into the skin or a muscle. Your medical oncologist, a doctor who specializes in anticancer medications, manages your drug therapy.

Drug therapy can treat cancer at any stage where it developed or traveled in the body. In general, drug therapy stops the growth of cancer cells by destroying the cells or stopping them from dividing and multiplying.

The goals of drug therapy vary, depending on the type of cancer and whether or how far it has spread. Treatment goals include:

• Shrinking large tumors before surgery to make them easier to remove. Drug therapy before surgery or another primary treatment is called neoadjuvant therapy.
• Delaying or preventing cancer from coming back (recurring) after the original treatment (usually surgery). Drug therapy after surgery or another primary treatment is called adjuvant therapy.
• Slowing or delaying the growth of cancer that has spread (metastasized) to the lymph nodes to other parts of the body. Treatment goals for metastatic cancer are prolonging life and reducing cancer symptoms.

Depending on your diagnosis, your medical oncologist may recommend one of a few types of drug therapy.

• Chemotherapy: This group of medications stops the growth of rapidly dividing cells in the body, both cancerous and noncancerous. While powerful, chemotherapy can cause more side effects than other medication types, because it cannot distinguish between cancerous and healthy cells. Chemotherapy is a treatment option for almost anyone with cancer.
• Hormone (endocrine) therapy: Some cancers grow in response to the hormones estrogen and/or progesterone. Hormone therapy lowers the amount of these hormones or blocks their effect, slowing or even stopping the cancer’s growth. Hormone therapy works only for cancers that have hormone receptors, so it is not for everyone.
• Targeted therapy: These medications slow the growth and spread of cancer by interfering with specific parts of cancerous cells. For treatment to work, the cancer must have the specific markers a particular medication was designed to target.
• Immunotherapy: These medications use components from the immune system to prompt your body to fight disease. Immunotherapy is a new therapy that has become important in treating many cancers.

Certain types of drug therapy are effective for certain types and stages of cancer. Your doctor will discuss the various options with you, to help determine the best approach to your treatment.

If your doctor recommends drug therapy, you may need more than one type, at specific times in your treatment plan and for specific purposes:

Drug therapy and surgery

Many people who have early or moderate staged cancers have surgery to remove the tumor and a margin of healthy tissue. Our cancer teams pair drug therapy with surgery in different ways:

• Before surgery: Neoadjuvant drug therapy can shrink tumors to make them easier to remove and to make surgery more effective. Sometimes, neoadjuvant therapy can shrink the tumor almost completely. If the pathologist (doctor who specializes in testing) cannot find any remaining cancer cells, this result is called a pathologic complete response.
• After surgery: We often use drug therapy as an adjuvant treatment to destroy any remaining cancer cells after surgery. Studies have shown that drug therapy can help you live longer and prevent or delay cancer from returning.

If you need treatment with cancer medications such as chemotherapy, our medical oncology (cancer) team will manage your care. You are also an important team member. Help us help you by asking questions and raising your concerns.

Your medical oncology team includes a number of cancer experts: