Many chemotherapeutic agents used to treat cancers are associated with side-effects of varying severity, because they are toxic to normal cells as well as malignant tumors. This has motivated the search for effective alternatives ...
Bio & Medicine
Dec 15, 2020
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291
For a long time a relationship between infertility and chemotherapeutic agents has been assumed. Now, the mechanism has been elucidated. Mainly women are affected because the quality control in the oocytes is different from ...
Biochemistry
Feb 22, 2011
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0
A research team led by scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) has solved the three-dimensional structure of a key protein that helps damaged cellular DNA repair itself. Investigators say that knowing ...
Cell & Microbiology
Oct 25, 2016
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44
Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science identify a means of controlling biological processes that could help treatments for immune disease, neurological disorders and cancer.
Cell & Microbiology
Nov 1, 2012
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(Phys.org) -- Researchers at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) have created biodegradable, ultra tiny, nanosized particles that can easily slip through the body's sticky and viscous mucus secretions to deliver a sustained-release ...
Bio & Medicine
Jul 5, 2012
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0
Safety fears about carbon nanotubes, due to their structural similarity to asbestos, have been alleviated following research showing that reducing their length removes their toxic properties.
Nanomaterials
Jan 15, 2013
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Spanish researchers have developed on a nanometric scale a new drug that combines photothermia and chemotherapy to help fight cancer.
Bio & Medicine
Sep 3, 2012
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0
There are up to 10,000 fungal spores in every cubic meter of air that can enter our bodies when we breathe them in. Some of these belong to the species Aspergillus fumigatus, a widespread fungus found everywhere in the environment.
Biochemistry
Feb 28, 2023
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228
The DNA replication process in which cells divide to create new cells also triggers repair of DNA damage, researchers from the University of Copenhagen report in a new study. The researchers studied extracts from frog eggs, ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 23, 2019
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28
Nanosystems that deliver anticancer drugs or imaging materials to tumours are showing significant progress, particularly those that respond to tumour-related stimuli, according to a review published in the journal Science ...
Bio & Medicine
Oct 30, 2018
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26
Chemotherapy, in its most general sense, refers to treatment of disease by chemicals that kill cells, both good and bad, but specifically those of micro-organisms or cancerous tumours. In popular usage, it refers to antineoplastic drugs used to treat cancer or the combination of these drugs into a cytotoxic standardized treatment regimen. In its non-oncological use, the term may also refer to antibiotics (antibacterial chemotherapy). In that sense, the first modern chemotherapeutic agent was Paul Ehrlich's arsphenamine, an arsenic compound discovered in 1909 and used to treat syphilis. This was later followed by sulfonamides discovered by Domagk and penicillin discovered by Alexander Fleming.
Most commonly, chemotherapy acts by killing cells that divide rapidly, one of the main properties of cancer cells. This means that it also harms cells that divide rapidly under normal circumstances: cells in the bone marrow, digestive tract and hair follicles; this results in the most common side effects of chemotherapy—myelosuppression (decreased production of blood cells), mucositis (inflammation of the lining of the digestive tract) and alopecia (hair loss).
Other uses of cytostatic chemotherapy agents (including the ones mentioned below) are the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis and the suppression of transplant rejections (see immunosuppression and DMARDs). Newer anticancer drugs act directly against abnormal proteins in cancer cells; this is termed targeted therapy.
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