Advances of radiotherapy combined with targeted therapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is insidious at onset, prone to lymph node metastasis, and has a high rate of locally advanced disease at initial diagnosis. Radiotherapy combined with chemotherapy is the main treatment for locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma, but local recurrence and distant metastasis often lead to treatment failure, of which radioresistance caused by radiotherapy may be one of the reasons. Targeted therapy can selectively inhibit tumor proliferation and metastasis, and patients can achieve long-term survival benefits with low toxic and side effects. Targeted therapy involves a variety of tumor mechanisms, in which combination with radiotherapy may improve radioresistance and the efficacy of radiotherapy. In this review, the advantages and research progress of targeted therapy combined with radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma were discussed.