Chemotherapy — Cancers Greatest Enemy
Cancer is a problem yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In 2021 there were an estimated 1,898,160 new cancer cases and 608,570 cancer-related deaths. How do we fight this problem? One of the most successful ways to do this is chemotherapy.
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is one of our biggest weapons in the fight against cancer. Over 650,000 patients use it every year. Chemotherapy is a prominent tool for stopping cancer; however, it does not come without its downsides.
Chemotherapy is one of the most common treatments for cancer and in this article, I will be going over the history of chemotherapy, how it works, types of chemotherapy, and the future of our fight against cancer.
History
Chemotherapy had an unconventional and odd way of getting to the cancer treatment we know of today.
‘Chemotherapy’ was first coined in the 20th century by the man above, Paul Ehrlich while looking for a cure for syphilis. Paul Ehrlich is an esteemed man who won a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on immunological defense mechanisms.
So that is a good start. The term Chemotherapy was coined by a nobel prize winner. However, it gets a little weird from here. While first named in the 20th century, chemotherapy as a defense against cancer was not thought of until during World War II. Why World War II? That is because, while treating patients with mustard gas, scientists thought, ‘Hey, we could use this to fight cancer.’ Weird right! So how did a weapon of war that causes serious eye damage, severe skin damage, blisters, and can cause chronic bronchitis to develop become a weapon against a deadly disease? Well, it’s simple.
While operating on patients with mustard gas scientists found that mustard gas hurt bone marrow. What is the trademark of bone barrow? Its cells rapidly grow and divide. What other thing has cells that rapidly grow and divide? Cancer. BOOM!! Not only do you know how chemotherapy as a tool against cancer was founded but you also have a great trivia answer.
How It Works
As a kid, I always wondered how medicine treated the right thing. How is it that when I take an anti-congestion pill I become less congested but when I take ibuprofen the pain in my ankle goes away? How is it that these two pills that are so similar in size, shape, and color can have such different effects? I asked myself this question about chemotherapy and found some answers.
Before knowing how chemotherapy works you need to know a little about the cell cycle and how cells multiply. It starts with G1. In this stage, the cell prepares to divide. The cell goes through checkpoints to make sure it can divide. Next up is the S phase or synthesis. During this phase, the cell DNA is replicated. After that is G2 this phase is the last phase before the all-important Mitosis phase. During G2 the cell goes through checkpoints to make sure they can fully divide with no damaged DNA. Finally, during the all-important stage of Mitosis, the original cell divides itself to make two cells. This creates two genetically identical cells. If you are still confused I have included a gif to hopefully help you better understand.
The cell cycle has many stages and these many stages allow room for many things to go wrong. Thankfully cells have many checks and balances to help stop anything from going wrong. However, things can still go wrong. When a cell’s checks and balances stop working, this is when cancer forms. Cells start dividing and replicating rapidly and uncontrollably, doing more harm than good.
Chemotherapy works by attacking cancer cells. How does it attack cancer? It attacks all cells in the body. Now I know that sounds bad but stick with me. While it does attack all cells in the body it leaves its most powerful attacks on rapidly dividing cells.
During synthesis a cell ‘exposes’ the DNA it is replicating and when it does this chemotherapy attacks that cell. If not repaired the cell will die. Thankfully healthy cells, because of those checks and balances, completely repair and heal themselves. However, because cancer cells are constantly dividing and have lost those checks and balances they are constantly exposed to chemotherapy and struggle to repair themselves.
Think of it like two people running in a circle. One is running at a much greater speed, let us say person A than the other person, person B, who is running normally. Person A and person B both get poked with a needle every time they complete a full lap. Since person B is running at a healthy rate person B has time to heal themselves before having to get poked again. However, because person A is running so fast they keep poking over and over again and can not heal themselves.
It is the same with our cells and chemotherapy. Person A is cells that rapidly divide and multiply (cancer cells) and person B is normal cells. The person poking the cells is chemotherapy and the circle is the cell cycle.
Different Types of Chemotherapy
While most chemotherapies work under the same general concept, they hurt the DNA in cells and stop them from dividing, different types of chemotherapies work differently when it comes to the nitty-gritty. Alkylating agents work by attacking DNA’s double helix structure. Microtubule stabilizers work by making sure that the tubes in our cells that help our cells do cell division do not break at the end of cell division. As a result, the cell is unable to divide. Antimetabolites work by interrupting the S phase and replacing normal DNA and RNA with other amino acids. Topoisomerase inhibitors are a drug that blocks an enzyme called topo isomerase 2. When this enzyme is neutralized, the cell can no longer divide.
Ways Chemotherapy is Given
Now that you know how chemotherapy works, it can be taken in many different ways.
Intravenous (IV) chemotherapy
Many drugs require injection directly into a vein. This is called intravenous or IV chemotherapy. Treatment takes a few minutes to a few hours. Some IV drugs work better if you get them over a few days or weeks. You take them through a small pump you wear or carry. This is called continuous infusion chemotherapy.
Intravenous or IV chemotherapy is chemotherapy injected directly into your vein. The patient will sit and wait until the chemotherapy has fully entered their body. This process can take just a couple of minutes or a few hours. If the treatment is better taken over a few days the patient may do what is called continuous infusion chemotherapy. The chemotherapy will be administered through a little pouch that the patient carries with them.
Oral and Topical Chemotherapy
Oral chemotherapy is chemotherapy delivered to your body via a pill, capsule, or liquid. You take these pills in your mouth. On the other hand, Topical chemotherapy is rubbed onto your skin. Topical chemotherapy is usually an ointment, gel, or cream.
If you want to learn more, go here to cancer.net.
Downsides
Chemotherapy has upsides but also bad downsides. While reading this article you may have seen some red flags when it comes to chemotherapy and you would be right to be wary of them. One big one is that chemotherapy attacks all cells in the body. This is why cancer patients lose their hair. Hair cells rapidly divide and therefore are attacked by chemotherapy. When attacked, the hair cells die causing the patients to lose their hair. Hair is not the only one safe from chemotherapy either. The cells of the mouth, gastrointestinal lining, reproductive system, and bone marrow are all hurt by chemotherapy. Thankfully, after treatment, these cells do have the ability to grow back.
However, it is not just what it does to your cells. Chemotherapy is expensive. The price of chemotherapy often leads people to shy away from it. The monthly cost can range from $1,000 to $12,000, creating a price many people can not afford.
The Future
The future for chemotherapy and cancer treatments is bright. Cancer deaths have declined to 3.2 million fewer cancer deaths from 1991 to 2018. While cancer is a big problem and will probably still be a problem for a long time you can rest easy knowing that people across the globe are hard at work to find better cures and detection methods.
Genetic testing is improving to detect who is at risk for cancer, oncologists can find irregularities in a patient’s cancer and match up immunotherapies to specifically target them, greater diversity in clinical trials to give better data, and new kinds of chemotherapy to better treat specific cancers.
Key Takeaways
Chemotherapy is a tool used to fight cancer.
Chemotherapy works by attacking all cells in the body but hurts cancer cells more than normal cells.
While being a great tool against cancer chemotherapy is not without it’s downsides
If you enjoyed
Like the article
Follow my linkedin
Subscribe to my newsletter
