An overview of current and future treatment options for chondrosarcoma

Abstract

Introduction: Chondrosarcoma is the most common primary bone tumor. It is difficult to diagnose as it is a rare, greatly diverse, complex and distinct disease, and it responds poorly to both chemotherapy and radiation treatment. For now, the ideal treatment for low-grade chondrosarcoma can be intralesional curettage, and additional radiotherapy or chemotherapy would be severe overtreatment. However, many recent studies have focused on the development of new anticancer strategies or chemotherapeutic agents derived from naturally comestible resources such as terrestrial herbs, new compounds and molecular targeting proteins for the treatment of chondrosarcoma.

Areas covered: In this review, an overview of current treatment options is given, including new compounds targeting to hedgehog, Bcl-2 inhibition, targeting to mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and Src inhibition; alternative medicines like benzimidazole, phloroglucinol and trichodermin derivatives; herbal medicines such as epigallocatechin-3-gallate, berberine and curcumin; cytogenetic approaches, including isocitrate dehydrogenase 1/2 and lysine-specific demethylase 1; and related therapeutic target proteins, which have the potential to improve treatment of patients with chondrosarcoma.

Expert opinion: The most promising approach for the treatment of human chondrosarcoma that is currently available includes a combination of experimental therapeutic options and sufficient surgical resection. Fortunately, many recent studies regarding tumor angiogenesis are providing new important information about chondrosarcoma therapies, and for this reason, we believe that a novel and effective therapy will be developed in the near future.

Keywords::

• apoptosis
• chemotherapy
• chondrosarcoma
• cytogenetics
• treatment

Notes

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