Chemotherapy Drug

As a disease cancer consists of the uncontrolled malignant cellular growth, the invasion of organs and the metastasis. It seams that the cause of the condition is a combination of genetic predisposition and the exposure to some environmental toxins. Basically, the principle that makes a chemotherapy drug functional is the impairment of the cellular division of tissues with a fast growth rate. The damage they produce among cells, gives chemotherapy drugs the name of cytotoxic medication.

In broad general terms, chemotherapy kills cells by means of chemical substances. Particularly speaking, chemotherapy aims at destroying cancer and invasive micro-organisms that remain unaffected to other forms of treatment. The most common chemotherapy drug regimen is made up from a combination of antineoplastic medication that represents the cytotoxic standardized treatment. Besides the reference to cancer treatment, chemotherapy also has an antibacterial dimension when it involves the use of antibiotics.

A chemotherapy drug, or better a combination of such drugs, functions on the principle of cellular destruction. Unfortunately, these drugs also affect/attack other healthy cells that divide rapidly. These other cells that get attacked by a chemotherapy drug are digestive tract linings, the bone marrow and the hair follicles. Thus, the main side effects of chemotherapy will include hair loss, the inflammation of the digestive tract and the reduced production of blood cells.

Among the other uses of the chemotherapy drug and cytostatic chemotherapy agents there are the treatment of autoimmune diseases (multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis) and the suppression of transplant rejections. There are newer anti-cancer drugs which were designed to act directly against abnormal proteins in cancer cells; this treatment option is known as targeted therapy.

When talking about a chemotherapy drug, we should be aware that there are different types available at present. Thus there are antimetabolites, alkylating agents, topoisomerase inhibitors, anthracyclines and several others. While all these chemicals interfere with the DNA structure, there are newer and revolutionary medicines like the tyrosine kinase inhibitors or the monoclonal antibodies that leave the nucleic acids unaffected.

These ones target a molecular abnormality in peculiar types of cancer such as gastrointestinal stromal tumors or chronic myelogenous leukemia. Besides these, there is also the category of drugs that modulate the tumor cell behavior without directly attacking those cells. Within these adjuvant therapies the option very commonly used is the hormone treatment.

The decision to administer only one chemotherapy drug or a combination of several medicines belongs to the doctor and it is taken depending on the stage of the disease and the purpose of the treatment.

Filed Under: Chemotherapy