ABSTRACT
Chemoresistance and toxic side effects are significant obstacles in conventional chemotherapy. Traditional chemotherapy or conventional chemotherapy drugs have various dosing schedules, toxicity profiles, and antitumor effects from molecularly targeted treatments. While traditional chemotherapy has several advantages, it also has many disadvantages, such as the requirement for high doses, poor absorption, side effects, minimal therapeutic indices, non-specific targeting, and the formation of multiple drug resistance (MDR). Even modern drug delivery techniques have unfavorable therapeutic effects that restrict the dosage and reduce the potency of anticancer pharmaceutics. Therefore, improving cancer treatment requires identifying new therapeutic targets as well as new treatment modalities. To overcome the shortcomings of conventional chemotherapy, novel treatment techniques called “metronomic chemotherapy” (MCT) have been developed. The benefits of this treatment strategy include minimal side effects and a low risk of developing acquired drug resistance. This strategy targets activated endothelial cells in cancers by often providing traditional chemotherapeutic medications at extremely low dosages. It is a brand-new and encouraging treatment approach for treating solid and hematologic cancers and entails the repeated administration of chemotherapeutic pharmaceutics at low doses that maintain long-lasting, active plasma levels and produce favorable tolerability in addition to its direct impact on tumor cells. The main methods of its activity are inhibiting tumor angiogenesis and modifying the immunological response of the host, directly affecting tumor cells, their progenitors, and surrounding stromal cells. Due to these factors, MCT can be viewed as a multitarget therapy in and of itself. The key advantages MCT has over conventional medicines are its reduced cost, easier use, and improved toxicity profile. Growing data support the use of MCT in personalized medicine, beginning with unfit elderly people and also for palliative care. This chapter provides a brief review of MCT as a better substitute for conventional chemotherapy.
