Combining Drugs and Biologics to Treat Nasopharyngeal Cancer

An optimal cancer therapeutic would secure effective disease control with only minimal adverse effects so that tumor destruction is not achieved at the cost of the patient's quality of life. Chemotherapy with small-molecule drugs remains the standard treatment for most cancers, but, despite their ready availability and rapid action of onset, most of these agents also cause both short- and long-term toxicity. Conversely, immunotherapy using tumor-directed T cells has shown promise in some malignancies without long-term toxicity, but broader application has been limited by the time taken to manufacture the T-cell products and the complexity of the process.