Chemotherapy Drug

Cancer refers to the uncontrolled growth of cells combined with malignant behavior – invasion and metastasis. The cause for this disease is believed to be the interaction of environmental toxins and the genetic susceptibility. Basically, the chemotherapy drug’s functioning principle is to impair cell division (mitosis), targeting rapidly-dividing cells. The fact that these drugs destroy cells leads to their being named cytotoxic.

Chemotherapy, generally speaking, implies the treatment of a disease by means of chemicals which kill the sick cells. Particularly speaking, chemotherapy is used to kill the cells of micro-organisms or cancer. Chemotherapy usually refers to antineoplastic drugs which are used to treat cancer or to the combination of these drugs into a cytotoxic standardized treatment regimen. From a non-oncological perspective, the term chemotherapy also refers to antibiotics – this is known as antibacterial chemotherapy.

A chemotherapy drug, or better a combination of such drugs, functions by destroying cells that divide quickly. Unfortunately, these drugs also affect/attack other healthy cells that divide rapidly. These other cells that get attacked by the chemotherapy drug are cells in the hair follicles, bone marrow and digestive tract. The results on the normal rapid-dividing cells are the side effects of chemotherapy: alopecia – hair loss, myelosuppression – decreased production of blood cells, and mucositis – inflammation of the digestive tract.

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. Most of the drugs can be divided into alkylating agents, antimetabolites, plant alkaloids, topoisomerase inhibitors, anthracyclines, and other antitumor agents. Some newer agents, like monoclonal antibodies and tyrosine kinase inhibitors, do not interfere directly with the DNA as do the above mentioned ones.

These ones target a molecular abnormality in particular 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.

Depending on the stage of the disease and the aim of the treatment, doctors will choose to administer one chemotherapy drug or a combination of drugs according to one or another of the existing strategies.