Chemotherapy is the thing that comes to mind for many cancer patients when considering their treatment options, and with good reason. Chemotherapy is a common treatment modality, and it is the first-line treatment for many cancers. Even if a patient requires radiation therapy or surgery, they may also be given chemotherapy in kolkata before or after those procedures to help shrink tumours or destroy cancer cells that may have remained.

How do the Chemotherapy Drugs Work

Most chemotherapy treatments have the same goal: to target fast-growing cells, kill them, and/or stop them from multiplying and dividing. However, not all chemotherapies function in the same way. Chemotherapy medications are meant to attack using several attack techniques. Some of them function by attacking the cancer cells’ DNA or RNA directly. Others are more effective during a certain stage of a cell’s life cycle, such as when it grows, prepares to divide, or splits into many cells.

Chemotherapy Drug Types

The chemotherapy drug type that is appropriate for treating your cancer is determined by a number of conditions, including the type of cancer and whether or not chemotherapy should be used in conjunction with other cancer treatements. We’ll go over the most prevalent types of chemotherapy in this blog, including:

  • Antimetabolites: Leukaemia, lymphoma, breast cancer, intestinal cancer and ovarian cancer are all treated using antimetabolites. These medications are used to stop cells from dividing. Antimetabolites are similar enough to DNA building blocks. Once the medicines enter the cell, it tries to use them to help with the cell division process. The DNA replication process comes to a halt since the drug’s fake building blocks aren’t compatible with cellular machinery.
  • Alkylating agents: These were among the first chemotherapy medications to be created, and they remain the most commonly prescribed class today. They could be used to treat cancers of the blood, the lungs, or the breast. Because cancer cells divide at such a high rate, they are more likely to accumulate DNA errors, and they don’t have the tools to repair the damage. Alkylating drugs kill cancer cells by injecting chemicals called alkyls into them. Alkyls may create more DNA strand instability in cancer cells, preventing them from growing or dividing.
  • Plant alkaloids: These chemotherapeutic medications are obtained from plants and contain natural ingredients, as their name implies. They could be used to treat cancers of the blood, the lungs, and the breast. Topoisomerase inhibitors and Mitotic inhibitors are two common plant alkaloids.

Anti-tumour antibiotics: Antibiotics used to treat cancer are not the same as antibiotics used to treat infections. Lung cancer, colorectal cancer, ovarian cancer, and prostate cancer may all be treated with antibiotics, says Dr. Sayan Paul, a famous radiation oncologist in kolkata. Anti-tumour antibiotics act by blocking tumour DNA from supplying RNA with essential genetic instructions for cell survival. Anti-tumour antibiotics also work by unfurling the DNA strand in cancer cells, preventing them from dividing.

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