There are drugs that have become standards that doctors have experience with in this cancer, and while they do not cure oral cancer, they are used in conjunction with radiation to sensitize the malignant cells to the radiation or there are those drugs that are systemic in nature used to control possible mets of the disease if it leave the local/regional area. The newest family of drugs are not systemic poisons as those we have become accustomed to, and these are actually antibodies. Erbitux falls into this group. They fill up a receptor site in the malignant cell where a protein normally goes, and they prevent the cancer cell from reproducing. So you can see that there are many types, and in each type many individual drugs and more coming down the clinical trial pipeline all the time. Right now, there is no chemotherapy agent that is curative for oral cancers by itself.

Brian, stage 4 oral cancer survivor. OCF Founder and Director. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.