“Targeted therapy” or “precision medicine” is a therapeutic strategy launched over two decades ago. It relies on drugs that inhibit key molecular mechanisms/pathways or genetic/epigenetic alterations that promote different cancer hallmarks. Many clinical trials, sponsored by multinational drug companies, have been carried out. During this time, research has increasingly uncovered the complexity of advanced breast cancer disease. Despite high expectations, patients have seen limited benefits from these clinical trials. Commonly, only a minority of trials are successful, and the few approved drugs are costly. The spread of this expensive therapeutic strategy has constrained the resources available for alternative research. Meanwhile, due to the high cost/benefit ratio, other therapeutic strategies have been proposed by researchers over time, though they are often not pursued due to a focus on precision medicine. Notable among these are drug repurposing and counteracting micrometastatic disease. The former provides an obvious answer to expensive targeted therapies, while the latter represents a new field to which efforts have recently been devoted, offering a “way beyond” the current research.
“靶向治疗”或“精准医疗”是二十多年前启动的一种治疗策略。该策略依赖于抑制关键分子机制/通路或促进不同癌症特征的遗传/表观遗传改变的药物。由跨国制药公司资助的许多临床试验已经开展。在此期间，研究逐渐揭示了晚期乳腺癌疾病的复杂性。尽管期望很高，但患者从这些临床试验中获益有限。通常，只有少数试验取得成功，而获批的少数药物价格昂贵。这种昂贵治疗策略的推广限制了可用于替代研究的资源。同时，由于高成本/效益比，研究人员陆续提出了其他治疗策略，但由于对精准医疗的关注，这些策略往往未被深入探索。其中值得注意的是药物再利用和对抗微转移性疾病。前者为昂贵的靶向治疗提供了明确的替代方案，而后者则代表了一个新的研究领域，近期已投入大量努力，为当前研究提供了“超越现有路径”的可能。
肿瘤(癌症)患者之家