Endometrial cancer: redefining the molecular-targeted approach

Endometrial cancer (EC) is the most frequent gynecologic malignancy in the world. Metastatic and recurrent disease confers a worse prognosis, and the side effects of the current cytotoxic agents are the main cause of treatment disruption. Recently, the genetic alterations that facilitate the start, development and progression of EC have been elucidated, reclassifying the disease in distinct subtypes with different mechanisms of carcinogenesis. Targeted therapy aims to interfere specifically these mechanisms causing less toxicity, therefore opening new perspectives for a tailored treatment and improvement of response and survival rates for heavily treated recurrent disease. Treatment with hormone therapy was not addressed in this review because it is an extensively discussed issue and would divert the discussion about molecular-targeted therapy. The purpose of this paper was to review the available literature data regarding the main genetic abnormalities related to the carcinogenesis and evaluate the safety and efficacy of the molecular-targeted agents in the treatment of metastatic and recurrent EC.