Anticancer Drug Combinations: Different Strategies Used in the Clinic

Introduction: The clinical efficacy of current drugs against metastatic neoplasms remains unsatisfactory. Most cancer-related deaths are attributed to tumor metastasis. More ra-tional selection and combination of anticancer drugs in clinical practice may help improve treat-ment outcomes. Methods: Despite significant progress in clinical trials, the principles guiding anticancer drug combinations still require scientifically driven strategies that incorporate computational assess-ment of drug efficacy, optimal dosing, synergistic interactions, and toxicity. Over the past three decades, advances in knowledge and technology have led to the emergence of multiple drug combination strategies for the treatment of metastatic cancer. Results: New decision-making rules and computational predictive systems have begun to enter clinical practice. Various types of drug combination strategies are gradually becoming more ma-ture, incorporating comparative drug-response profiling, high-throughput evaluation technolo-gies, drug-class–based selection, sequencing, and biomarker-guided approaches, as well as adaptable computational algorithms. Discussion: To translate these medical advances into practice, experimental and clinical meth-odologies must be integrated with supporting systems, such as statistical modeling, computa-tional tools, and evidence from historical medical datasets and literature. These integrated ap-proaches can improve drug selection and optimize combination therapies.