Cancer Drug Therapy

What is Cancer Drug Therapy?

At Horizon, we understand every person is different, therefore individualized care to each person is important to us. Our specialized services include the following three types of cancer drug therapies to treat cancer:

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is the most common type of cancer drug treatment. Chemo means ‘chemical’ or ‘drug’ and is a cancer-killing drug. This treatment method involves using medications. Cancer cells grow and divide quickly, and chemotherapy destroys or slows down fast dividing cells (including healthy cells). It is a systemic treatment because it affects the whole body.

Targeted Therapy

These are medications that have a specific ‘target.’ They only destroy or slow down the growth of cancer cells that have the specific ‘target.’ Examples of targets are receptors on the cell surface or proteins.

Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy is a type of cancer drug treatment that uses your body’s immune system to help fight cancer, just like it fights infections like the flu. It is similar to chemotherapy in that both classes of drug treatments destroy cancer cells; but a big difference is that while chemotherapy attacks cancer cells directly, immunotherapy targets the interaction between the immune system and cancer cells. Immunotherapy helps your body to know that the cancer is something it should try to get rid of. When your immune system knows that the cancer is there, it starts to work hard to destroy your cancer cells. Immunotherapy works better for some types of cancer than for others. For example, immunotherapy works better for melanoma (a type of skin cancer), lung cancer, and renal (kidney) cancer.

To learn more about Horizon’s Cancer Care (Oncology) services, how to access our oncology clinics’ services, and/or to prepare for an appointment, click here.