Medical therapy uses drugs and other agents to kill cancer cells, to stop them from growing and/or to boost your own immune system to help fight the cancer. Medical therapy for sarcoma may include different types of treatment, such as chemotherapy, targeted therapy and immunotherapy. Your medical oncologist will determine which types of medical treatment are best for you, select the specific drugs or combination, and manage any side effects.
Chemotherapy for sarcoma
Chemotherapy uses drugs that interrupt how cancer cells divide and multiply. This treatment type may be given before and/or after surgery. Chemotherapy for sarcoma may be given in different ways:
Roswell Park is the only care center in Western New York that performs regional chemotherapy treatments.
- Systemic chemotherapy is delivered intravenously (IV) or taken orally. The drugs circulate the body, seeking rapidly dividing cancer cells to destroy.
- Regional chemotherapy is a newer approach that confines the chemotherapy drugs to a specific the region of the body. This allows oncologists to administer a higher dose of chemotherapy directly to the tumor location, killing cancer cells more effectively while limiting the drugs’ effect on the rest of the body.
- Isolated Limb Infusion. In this type of regional chemotherapy, the drugs are placed directly into the blood vessels that supply the limb where the sarcoma tumor is located. Blood flow to and from the limb is temporarily halted to keep the treatment at the tumor site.
Targeted therapy for sarcoma
Targeted therapy is a class of anti-cancer drugs that find and attack cancer cells by focusing on a specific characteristic of the cell. For example, some targeted drugs stop the action of certain molecules that allow the cancer cells to survive. Other targeted drugs may block the signals or hormones that tell the cancer cells to grow. And other targeted drugs may inhibit the ability for the tumor to grow new blood vessels that it needs to sustain it.
Immunotherapy for sarcoma
Immunotherapy is a new class of cancer treatment that uses the power of your own immune system to fight cancer. This treatment approach uses substances made by the body or in a laboratory to stimulate or direct the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells.