current treatments of cancer slide 2-27-13

2014-08-29

azim58 - current treatments of cancer slide 2-27-13


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Cancer is currently the 2nd leading cause of death after heart disease. Therefore, we definitely need to develop better treatments. All of the current treatments of cancer have serious side effects or are not effective enough for any type of cancer. Surgery is usually a procedure most people would want to avoid such as a mastectomy which is a removal of the breast to treat breast cancer. Radiation therapy harms all of the cells in your body in addition to the cancer cells. Some chemotherapy is a little more targeted at the molecular level. Two examples of chemotherapy drugs are tamoxifen which is an antagonist of the estrogen receptor to treat breast cancer and Gleevac which blocks the BCR-Abl gene fusion tyrosine kinase enzyme. Drugs like this can interact with other molecules in the body and cause side effects though. Some of the newest and most specific treatments involve immunotherapy. For example herceptin is an antibody against the HER2/neu protein of breast cancer. This is a fairly successful treatment, but it can only be used for breast cancer. Rituximab is an antibody against the CD20 surface protein on B cells to treat lymphomas. This seems like a targeted treatment, but CD20 would be on the surface of all B cells not just the B cells causing the lymphoma. From this list it is clear that we need better treatments for cancer.

Description 2

Cancer is currently the 2nd leading cause of death after heart disease. Therefore, we definitely need to develop better treatments. All of the current treatments of cancer have serious side effects or are not effective enough for any type of cancer. Surgery is usually a procedure most people would want to avoid such as a mastectomy which is a removal of the breast to treat breast cancer. Radiation therapy harms all of the cells in your body in addition to the cancer cells. Some chemotherapy is a little more targeted at the molecular level. Two examples of chemotherapy drugs are tamoxifen which is an antagonist of the estrogen receptor to treat breast cancer and Gleevac which blocks the BCR-Abl gene fusion tyrosine kinase enzyme. Drugs like this can interact with other molecules in the body and cause side effects though. Some of the newest and most specific treatments involve immunotherapy. For example herceptin is an antibody against the HER2/neu protein of breast cancer. This is a fairly successful treatment, but it can only be used for breast cancer. Rituximab is an antibody against the CD20 surface protein on B cells to treat lymphomas. This seems like a targeted treatment, but CD20 would be on the surface of all B cells not just the B cells causing the lymphoma. From this list it is clear that we need better treatments for cancer.