Targeted therapy in the treatment of solid tumors: Practice contradicts theory

The basic principle of targeted therapy formulated about ten years ago consists in the design and application of drugs specifically directed against well-defined targets that are critical for tumor survival and not compromising for normal organs and tissues. The past decade has been marked by the appearance of an immense diversity of novel antitumor agents with claimed targeted action. Unfortunately, despite indisputable progress in clinical settings, some popular drugs against solid tumors (e.g. bevacizumab, trastuzumab, erlotinib, gefitinib) nominally assigned to targeted-action drugs, cannot actually be classified with this group being nonconforming to a priori stated goals of targeted therapy. The state-of-the-art and current problems in targeted therapy of solid tumors are reviewed.