Bone cancer
Bone cancer is treated with various methods, including surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. Surgery is used to remove the cancerous tumor, and radiation therapy is used to kill any cancer cells that may remain after surgery. Chemotherapy is used to kill cancer cells throughout the body.
However, all three of these treatments can have unwanted side effects on normal cells. For example, chemotherapy can cause hair loss, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, skin rash, and fatigue. Radiation therapy can cause mouth sores, bleeding, infection, and fatigue. Surgery can damage nerves and other tissues in the area of the surgery. In order to reduce or eliminate side effects, it is desirable to target treatment to the site of cancer only, thereby minimizing exposure of healthy tissue to the treatment. Localized drug delivery to the area of a tumor is called “targeted drug delivery” or “drug targeting, which is usually accomplished through radiation therapy but only partially.