New drug developments for patients with metastatic soft tissue sarcoma

For the subgroup of patients with inoperable gastrointestinal stromal tumors, progress has been made by the rapid development and approval of the targeted therapy imatinib mesylate. Small round cell sarcomas (SRCT), such as Ewing/primitive neuroectodermal tumor, desmoplastic SRCT, and rhabdomyosarcoma, are chemotherapy-sensitive and potentially curable malignancies that are treated with multimodality dose-intensive neoadjuvant protocols regardless of size or overt metastatic disease. However, the number of effective cytotoxic agents for the treatment of patients with metastatic so-called adult soft tissue sarcoma is limited, especially when patients have failed anthracycline- and ifosfamide-based chemotherapy.