Targeted Therapy

Kinase Inhibitors in Solid Tumours: The Age of the '-nib'

For a century we chose cancer drugs by the ORGAN they came from — a lung drug for lung cancer, a breast drug for breast cancer. Then came a family of oral pills, almost all ending in '-nib', that ignore the organ and ask a different question: what is the exact mutation driving THIS tumour? Match the pill to the mutation and a tumour can melt away in weeks. Give the same pill without the mutation and nothing happens. This is targeted therapy — and it rewrote how we treat solid cancers.

Monoclonal Antibodies and Antibody–Drug Conjugates in Solid Tumours

Chemotherapy poisons every fast-dividing cell and hopes the tumour dies first. What if instead you could build a molecule that recognizes the cancer cell by name, docks onto a protein on its surface, and either switches off its growth signal or hand-delivers a chemotherapy warhead only to that cell? That is the promise of monoclonal antibodies — the big IV "-mab" drugs — and their sharpest new form, the antibody–drug conjugate.

Precision Oncology: Why the Test Comes Before the Drug

For a century cancer was named by its organ — breast, lung, colon — and treated with poison that hit every dividing cell. Modern oncology asks a different question first: not WHERE is the tumour, but WHAT is broken inside it. A molecular test reads the tumour's wiring, and only then is the drug chosen. The report's tiny checkboxes — HER2, EGFR, RAS, BRCA, PD-L1 — now write the prescription. Learn to read them and you understand why two patients with the "same" cancer walk out with two different plans.