Neoadjuvant therapy is the administration of therapeutic agents before a main treatment.
One example is neoadjuvant hormone therapy prior to radical radiotherapy for adenocarcinoma of the prostate.
The downstaging is then a surrogate marker of efficacy on undetected dissemination, resulting in improved longtime survival compared to the surgery-alone strategy.
Often, it is unclear which surrounding structures are directly involved in the disease and which are just showing signs of inflammation.
In some cases, magnetic resonance imaging can predict the response of a patient to neoadjuvant therapy, for example in ovarian cancer.