Deregulated metabolism of oxygen with increased generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is characteristic for a majority of cancers. The elevated ROS levels are in part responsible for further progression of cancer, but when produced in large excess, they endanger the viability of the cancer cells. To protect themselves from ROS-mediated toxicity, many types of cancers enhance the intrinsic antioxidant defenses, which make them dependent on the efficacy of a given ROS-detoxifying system. This poses an attractive target for anticancer therapy by two main approaches: the use of ROS-generating agents (i.e., prooxidants) or by inhibition of a chosen antioxidant system. However, the clinical efficacy of either of these approaches used alone is modest at best. The solution may rely on combining these strategies into an advanced prooxidant therapy (APoT) in order to produce a synergistic and cancer-specific effect. Indeed, such strategies have proven efficient in preclinical models, e.g., in B cell malignancies and breast cancer. Following promising experimental reports on APoT, this approach needs to be further extensively tested in order to become a potential alternative or an enhancement for classical chemotherapy.

中文翻译：

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通过增强的抗氧化剂治疗来控制癌症中氧化代谢的改变。

氧的代谢失调和活性氧（ROS）的产生增加是大多数癌症的特征。升高的ROS水平部分地导致癌症的进一步发展，但是当大量产生时，它们危及癌细胞的生存力。为了保护自己免受ROS介导的毒性的影响，许多类型的癌症都增强了固有的抗氧化剂防御能力，这使它们依赖于给定的ROS解毒系统的功效。这通过两种主要方法为抗癌治疗提出了一个有吸引力的目标：使用ROS产生剂（即促氧化剂）或通过抑制所选的抗氧化剂系统。但是，单独使用这两种方法中的任一种，其临床疗效充其量都是适度的。该解决方案可能依赖于将这些策略组合到先进的抗氧化剂治疗（APoT）中，以产生协同作用和癌症特异性作用。实际上，已证明此类策略在临床前模型中有效，例如在B细胞恶性肿瘤和乳腺癌中。在关于APoT的有希望的实验报告之后，需要进一步对该方法进行广泛的测试，以使其成为经典化学疗法的潜在替代方法或增强方法。