Anticancer Treatment Analysis Report

Running head: ANTICANCER TREATMENT
SELECTIVE TOXICITY IN CANCER AND LIMITATIONS OF CHEMOTHERAPY
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ANTICANCER TREATMENT
SELECTIVE TOXICITY IN CANCER
Cancer can be described as a disease condition that involves uncontrolled growth and
proliferation of some specific cells. The condition can be treated by controlling the unnatural
growth and proliferation of those cells. The selective toxicity can be defined as a mechanism of
action of some specific dugs, which involves displaying their adverse effects only against some
specific target cells or molecules (Govindaraju et al. 2015). Normally when applying the other
treatment methods to control the growth and proliferation of the cancer cells, the adverse effects
of those treatment methods might affect the growth and proliferation of the other normal cells as
well. However, if the drugs have the ability to identify some specific features of the cancer cells,
they will be able to apply their adverse effect to the cancer cells only, without affecting other
healthy cells. Chemotherapy is a treatment method that is used widely these days to treat a
cancerous condition. The method uses drugs, which uses the selective toxicity against various
biomolecules. The drugs can be differentiated into various categories, such as antimetabolites,
alkylating agents, topoisomerase inhibitors and cytotoxic inhinitors. The antimetabolite drugs
share structural similarity with the DNA and RNA building blocks and interfere with their
synthesis. An example of such drug is floxuridine. The drugs fall under alkylating agents
category targets the DNA of the cancerous cells and binds covalently with them, which leads to
the destruction of normal cellular functions and thus growth of the cells becomes inhibited. An
example of such anticancer drug is cyclophosphamide (Luengo, Gui and Vander Heiden 2017).
The other drugs inhibit specific proteins and enzymes involved in the DNA synthesis and thus
interfere with the process.

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ANTICANCER TREATMENT

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ANTICANCER TREATMENT