New therapeutic options for mesothelioma

Abstract

Malignant pleural mesothelioma is an aggressive thoracic tumor that is often refractory to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, making long-term survival a difficult goal. Although multimodality therapies, including cytoreductive surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, have been tested, their survival benefit is unclear. Recently, novel cytotoxic agents such as pemetrexed have shown promise in the treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma, and in early trials new small-molecule agents targeted to the specific biochemical properties of this tumor have shown promise.