Cancer choriocarcinoma, cure

Various forms of cancer exhibit a broad spectrum of response to antineoplastic medications. Some forms of cancer (choriocarcinoma, Wilms tumor) can be cured in more than 90 percent of affected patients. In other neoplastic disorders, chemotherapy may not cure the disease but may succeed in mediating remission and prolonging survival in a large patient percentage. Of course, other factors such as early detection and the concomitant use of other interventions (surgery, radiation) will greatly influence the success of chemotherapy drugs. 

Therapeutic modalities in cancer treatment may involve surgery, radiation, and/or chemotherapy. The objectives of cancer chemotherapy include (1) cure, (2) reduction in tumor size, and (3) prolongation of life. At the present time, approximately 50 percent of patients with cancer can be cured, with drug treatment estimated to contribute in 17 percent of cases. Cancer chemotherapy can be curative in testicular cancer, diffuse large cell lymphoma, Hodgkin s disease, choriocarcinoma, certain childhood tumors (acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Burkitt s lymphoma, Wilms tumor, and embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma). Certain cancers are more resistant to chemotherapy than others (e.g., lung and colon). 

Antifolate chemotherapy occupies a Special place in the history of cancer treatment, as this class of drugs produced the first striking, although temporary, remissions in leukemia, and the first cure of a solid tumor, choriocarcinoma. These advances provided great impetus to the development of chemotherapy for cancer. Interest in folate... 

Antifolate chemotherapy produced the first cure of a solid tumor, choriocarcinoma. Introduction of high-dose regimens with rescue of host toxicity by the reduced folate, leucovorin (folinic acid, citrovorum factor, 5-formyl tetrahydrofolate, N -formyl FH ), further extended the effectiveness of these drugs to both systemic and CNS lymphomas, osteogenic sarcoma, and leukemias. Most recently, analogs that differ from methotrexate in their transport properties and sites of action have proven useful in treating other cancers. 

Chemotherapy, on its own, has proved effective in the following conditions. In choriocarcinoma, a womb tumour of young, pregnant women who used to suffer 90% mortality within a year but now have a 90% chance of complete cure, thanks to selectively toxic drugs in Burkitt s lymphoma of children in Africa, in testicular and ovarian cancer, in bone cancers (including rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing s sarcoma, osteogenic sarcoma), muscle cancers, histiocytic lymphoma. 

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