MADURAI: Blood cancer treatment in southern districts of Tamil Nadu has a good news from Meenakshi Mission Hospital and Research Centre (MMHRC) in Madurai as its ‘Targeted Therapies’ approach is showing positive clinical outcomes for children and adults who underwent treatment for leukemia at the hospital’s oncology department here.
Oncology experts at the Department of Adult Hematology and Pediatric Oncology at MMHRC have today explained how targeted therapies are widening treatment options for blood cancer patients by attacking only the cancer cells in the patient’s body.
“In conventional chemotherapy, we use high dose drugs to destory rapidly dividing cancer cells whereas in targeted therapy we act directly on the cancer cells while sparing healthy tissues. First we will assess the patient’s response to chemotherapy and if the response is not good, we can use targeted therapy which is designed to attack leukemia cells directly and effectively. The side effects are only few and treatment tolerability is also good in this targeted therapy approach,” Dr.T.Kasi Viswanathan, senior consultant and Head of Department of Hemato Oncology at MMHRC, told reporters at a press meet organized by the hospital here today- February 3rd 2026.
Paediatric hemato-oncologists Dr.V.S.Venkateswaran and Dr.V.Anitha told reporters that so far more than 1,000 children and adolescents who had acute leukamia with rapidly progressing forms of blood cancer were treated at the Department of Adult Hematology and Paediatric Oncology which was established at MMHRC in Madurai in the year 2010.
“We can say that targeted therapies for blood cancer patients will have good treatment outcomes. Targeted Therapies facility was started six months back in our hospital and the results are good,” Dr.T.Kasi Viswanathan has said and added that Targeted Therapies have a better safety profile with precise responses because the latest medical advances of leukaemia are used for targeted antibody therapies such as blinatumomab and inotuzumab.
The blood cancer treatment expert doctors at Meenakshi Mission Hospital in Madurai have explained at the press meet today that five persons out of one lakh population are getting blood cancer, but there is nothing to worry because of availability of precision-based therapies these days for young and adult patients.
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