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 principle that makes a chemotherapy drug functional is the impairment of the cellular division of tissues with a fast growth rate. The fact that these drugs destroy cells leads to their being named cytotoxic.

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. 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 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. More modern cancer treatments known as targeted therapy use anti-cancer medication that attacks only the abnormal proteins in cancer cells.

Different classes of chemotherapy drug medication are 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.

Such modern drugs target a molecular abnormality in peculiar types of cancer such as chronic myelogenous leukemia or gastrointestinal stromal tumors. Besides these, there is also the category of drugs that modulate the tumor cell behavior without directly attacking those cells. From these so-called adjuvant therapies, the hormone treatment will be commonly used. 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.

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