How treatments work

Cancer can be treated in many ways, and most people get more than one kind of treatment. These guides explain, in plain words, how surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, targeted therapy, hormone therapy, stem cell transplant and CAR T-cell therapy work, what a treatment day looks like, and the side effects to watch for. Your care team will explain which ones fit your cancer and your goals.

• Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy uses strong medicines to kill fast-growing cancer cells, and most of its side effects can be prevented or treated.
• Immunotherapy: Immunotherapy helps your own immune system find and attack cancer, and its side effects are different from chemo.
• Targeted therapy: Targeted therapy blocks specific changes inside cancer cells, which is why biomarker testing matters.
• CAR T-cell therapy: CAR T-cell therapy changes your own immune cells in a lab so they can find and kill certain blood cancers.
• Antibody-drug conjugates: Antibody-drug conjugates deliver a strong cancer-killing drug straight to cells that carry a specific marker.
• Stem cell transplant: A stem cell transplant replaces damaged bone marrow with healthy blood-forming cells after high-dose treatment.
• Radiation therapy: Radiation therapy uses focused high-energy beams to damage cancer cells in one part of the body.
• Hormone therapy: Hormone therapy slows or stops cancers that use hormones to grow, mainly breast and prostate cancer.