Targeted therapy in the treatment of gastrointestinal stromal tumors using the example of imatinib

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors are a group of rare malignant neoplasms of the gastrointestinal tract of mesenchymal origin, the incidence of this group of tumors is 10-15% of cases per 1 million population. This tumor originates, presumably, from intestinal Cajal cells (intestinal pacemaker cells). The therapy of this type of tumor is very complex, it is based on targeted therapy — therapy aimed at tumor "targets" (proteins, receptors, genes), which are key to the development of neoplasms. One of these drugs is imatinib. This is a cytostatic preapart, a representative of a new class of targeted drugs that selectively act on tumor defective cells. I will consider the effect of this drug in gastrointestinal stromal tumors in this article.