The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires several rounds of testing before approving any medical therapy or treatment. The drug or treatment approval process takes several years and often costs billions of dollars for a single treatment. Biotechnology and drug companies must prove their product is safe for use in humans and undergo long-term studies to prove the overall safety and efficacy of a treatment. To date, the FDA has approved several drugs and treatments for use in fighting various forms of cancer.
Doxorubicin
One treatment goverment-approved to help fight cancer is the drug doxorubicin, used as part of chemotherapy. CancerQuest, a site run by Emory University, indicates that doxorubicin belongs to a class of drugs called anthracycline antiobiotics, which harm cancer cells by damaging the cells' DNA.
Doxorubicin disrupts the normal structure of DNA molecules within each cancer cell, and also leads to breaks in the cell's DNA. Ultimately, doxorubin prevents the cell from replicating and dividing, while also preventing the cell from making proteins required to survive, ultimately killing the cell. The FDA has approved doxorubicin as a treatment for several forms of cancer, used alone or in combination with other drugs.
Imatinib
The government has also approved use of the drug imatinib, also called Gleevec, for use in treating several forms of cancer. Gleevec is a targeted therapy that works by inhibiting the function of a class of proteins called kinases. Under normal conditions, different kinases allow the cell to coordinate its behavior and help tell the cell when to divide. In cancer, the over-activation of certain kinases leads to an abundance of proliferative signaling in the cancer cell, promoting rapid cell division and driving tumor development. Gleevec treats cancer by inhibiting these kinases, therefore preventing the cancer cell from transmitting proliferative signals, and ultimately stopping cancer growth. Novartis, Gleevec's manufacturer, indicates that the drug is government-approved to treat chronic myeloid leukemia as well as stromal cancers.
Selective Internal Radiation Therapy
The U.S. government has also approved selective internal radiation therapy, or SIRT, as a treatment for cancer. Radiation therapies involve exposing cancer cells to high doses of radiation, which in turn damages essential structures within the cancer cell, causing cell death and tumor shrinkage. SIRT allows doctors to perform radiation therapy with the use of radioactive microscopic beads. The beads accumulate within tumors throughout the body and emit radiation, damaging the tumor from the inside. Over a period of days, the radiation from the beads kills the surrounding cancer cells, shrinking the tumor.
The Greenebaum Cancer Center explains that US government approval of SIRT allows doctors to treat extensive tumors that would otherwise prove inoperable, such as advanced liver or colon cancers.
