healthy cells
Cancer treatments vary depending on the diseases type and stage. Traditional approaches, including surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and hormonal therapy, aim to remove or kill rapidly dividing cancer cells, but these strategies have their limitations. Depending on a tumors location, for example, cancer surgeons may be unable to remove it. Radiation and chemotherapy are difficult, and it is often impossible to target only the cancer cells. The treatments inevitably destroy healthy tissue as well. To address this, researchers are working on pharmaceuticals that can target specific proteins implicated in cancer-associated molecular pathways.