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Articles: Science | About Cancer Treatment !!!
- Mr. Pamulaparti Venkata Phaneendra
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Many years later, thanks largely to pioneering work by Cancer Research UK's Tom Connors, the first platinum derivative, cisplatin, was approved for use in cancer patients. By 1977, cisplatin, in combination with other drugs, had revolutionised the treatment of testicular cancer, and significantly improved the treatment of many other cancers.
Different classes of chemotherapy drugs work by interfering with different stages of cell division. To take advantage of this, doctors often prescribe them in combination ('combination therapy'), so that they are more effective.
Sometimes a patient can be treated with as many as eight different drugs. A huge number of clinical trials are carried out even now to test new combinations of drugs in different sequences. Cancer Research UK is heavily involved with this type of research.
Chemotherapy is a harsh treatment - rather like taking a sledgehammer to crack a hazelnut. As well as causing unpleasant side effects, many chemotherapy drugs are, in themselves, carcinogenic - treatment with these drugs carries a risk of secondary cancer. Cancer Research UK is committed to producing a new generation of more specific, better-targeted cancer therapies, to improve the quality of life of cancer patients and to minimise the risks from their treatment.
4)Hormone therapy
Hormones are chemical messages produced by some parts of the body that cause changes in other parts. For example, the ovaries produce the female sex hormone oestrogen, while the pancreas produces insulin, which affects how we absorb glucose from the blood.
We now know that hormone systems are implicated in some types of cancer; for example, oestrogen encourages some types of breast cancer to grow faster. By tinkering with the body's hormone system in the right way, doctors can stop some cancers growing and even kill them.
In 1896, George Beatson, a Glasgow surgeon, published details of three patients whose advanced breast cancer had responded favourably to oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries). This was the first hint that the hormone system was involved in cancer growth. Beatson's work led scientists to look for ways to block oestrogen's tumour-promoting activity.
By 1937, Dodds & Robinson had invented a chemical called diethylstilboestrol, which showed anti-tumour activity in an MRC trial in 1939. However, the high doses required produced severe side effects. Despite this, the drug became the drug of choice for prostate cancer a few years later.
In 1969, the synthetic oestrogen-blocker tamoxifen was first used to treat breast cancer at the Christie Hospital in Manchester. Tamoxifen is now widely used in breast cancer treatment, and Cancer Research UK has been at the forefront of research into the drug's effectiveness.
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