According to the American Cancer Society, chemotherapy is the use of drugs in the treatment of cancer. Chemotherapy agents are often combined to enhance their therapeutic effects. According to "Clinical Oncology," combination chemotherapy has been consistently shown to be superior to the use of single agents.
Preventing Drug Resistance
Tumors tend to develop resistance against single chemotherapy agent over the course of treatment, according to "Clinical Oncology." This is true even for tumors that initially respond well to single chemotherapy agents, since tumor cells can undergo mutation and become resistant to a specific agent. Combination chemotherapy can provide a broader range of coverage against resistant tumor cells.
Improving Tumor Response To Chemotherapy
Tumors treated by combination therapy tend to have a better response rate than single-agent therapy. For instance, in a 2005 article published in "Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews," the authors reviewed 48 clinical trials and concluded that combination regimens demonstrated a significant advantage for tumor response and time to progression in women with metastatic breast cancer over single-agent therapies.
Improving Survival
Combination chemotherapy has been shown to improve survival of lung cancer patients in comparison to single-agent therapy, according to "Clinical Oncology." This is true for both adjuvant chemotherapy and neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Furthermore, most (if not all) curative chemotherapy regimens for cancer use combination of chemotherapy agents, according to "Clinical Oncology."
References
- American Cancer Society: Chemotherapy
- "Clinical Oncology", Abeloff et al., 2007, Elsevier
- "Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews", Single agents versus combination regimens for metastatic breast cancer, 2005 Apr 18;(2)
