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Ways To Deal With Your Drug Resistant Cancer

11 July 2016 by Sasha Meyer

When you are suffering from cancer, you may think you know what to expect from your cancer treatments. The majority of cancers, no matter what area of the body the effects are treated with radiation therapy and chemotherapy. However, the problem with some of these treatments is that the cancer cells can become drug resistant. This does not mean that your cancer is untreatable but merely indicates that you may need to try some different options. Get to know some of the ways that you may be able to deal with cancer that has become resistant to the usual cancer treatments so that you know what to expect going forward.

Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy is one of the treatment options that can help you continue to fight off your cancer after it has become drug resistant. This cancer treatment option targets the cancer patient's immune system in an attempt to teach or stimulate the immune system into targeting cancer cells like it would bacterial or viral invaders in the body.

There are several different ways to go about the immunotherapy process for drug resistant cancers. It uses substances that the body naturally produces or those made in a lab to get the immune cells to target specific proteins or genetic markers in the cancer cells.

Sometimes, this actually involves using a virus like a stripped down version of the herpes virus to infiltrate the cancer cells to make those cells easier to target. Immunotherapy is sometimes used in cancers that are not drug resistant, but can be especially useful when it is used to target the specific mutation that makes the cancer cells resistant to the medications. If this gene mutation is destroyed by the immune system, then the chemotherapy and radiation therapy can be more effective.

Targeted Therapies

Another form of treatment that can be effective when it comes to drug-resistant cancer is known as targeted therapy. Targeted therapies follow the same basic premise as immunotherapy in that it focuses on specific genes and proteins in the cancer cells.

However, rather than trying to get the immune system to go after those cells, targeted therapy uses specific drugs and medications to attack the cancer cells. Targeted therapies generally work on specific cancer and require cancer cell typing and sub-typing tests. There are effective targeted therapies for certain types of colorectal and  breast cancer among others.

Oftentimes, targeted therapy is used as a part of a larger treatment program and is paired with the traditional cancer treatments. The combination helps to more quickly and effectively eradicate cancer cells and stop tumor growth.

Now that you know a few of the ways that you may be able to better deal with drug-resistant cancer, you can be sure that you know what to expect going forward and always remember that you have options to treat your cancer even if it becomes drug resistant.

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