Platinum-based chemotherapy made a paradigm shift in the treatment of different cancers initially; however, the success of these agents may have reached the peak as researchers have tried different combination regimes in different trials without having major differences in the end results. New frontiers of research were opened up firstly with this discovery that conventional chemo-radiation therapy can induce immunological cell death by recruiting high-mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) protein which triggers the T cell immunity and secondly monoclonal antibodies agents which were regrettably not effective as "monotherapy"; however, the combination with conventional chemotherapy had demonstrated good results. Different monoclonal antibodies and conventional chemotherapeutic combination regimes are currently in use and researchers are trying different other combinations as well to glean the maximum benefits from them. Several strategies conferring resistance to platinum compounds have been identified, but there is still significant research required to achieve full understanding of these resistance mechanisms to overcome the ineffectiveness or toxicities of platinum compounds. It seems reasonable in the current perspective when conventional chemotherapeutic agents exhibited immunogenic cell death and they are currently in use with monoclonal antibodies to revisit the platinum agent's pharmacology. This may discover new basis for combination chemotherapy with monoclonal antibodies which may improve the current cancer treatments by opening new vistas for newer combination regimes with less toxicity and better efficacy. In this article we review the pharmacologies of both cisplatin and oxaliplatin in the drug development perspectives and explore the possible association of these drugs with monoclonal antibodies.
Keywords: Cisplatin; Combination therapy; Monoclonal antibodies; Oxaliplatin.