Chemotherapy is effective with interruptions
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Nowadays, a huge number of people suffer from the defeat of the body by malignant and benign cancers. Chemotherapy is the most common method of cancer treatment. Depending on the stage of the disease and on the type of tumor, chemotherapy of different intensity is used. A single medicine capable of destroying a malignant tumor has not yet been invented, but scientists all over the world do not give up trying to fight the disease.
In the US popular science journal Nature a few days earlier, a promising article was published that biologists managed to trace the dependence of cancer cell cells on drugs that are administered intravenously during chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is known to be carried out more than once and the scientists managed to find out that after several repeated courses of treatment, the cells of a malignant tumor become drug dependent. Dependence is akin to the narcotic and after a while these cells are very difficult to exist without, so-called, doping.
Doctors believe that breaks in chemotherapy procedures can have a beneficial effect on the outcome of the disease, since the cells of malignant tumors that managed to develop resistance and immunity to the drugs will experience severe inconvenience if they are deprived of drugs.
The chemotherapy procedure itself looks like this: intravenously or intramuscularly, a toxic solution of the substance is introduced into the human body, which should have a devastating effect on a malignant tumor that afflicted the patient. The drug should also prevent reproduction, the division of foreign cells. Due to the fact that the drug is toxic (although its effect on the tumor is stronger than the effect on the human body), during the chemotherapy the patient has problems with the immune system. This moment significantly reduces the effectiveness of treatment, because the body is too weak and does not have the ability to fight the disease on its own.
In the process of research, scientists have discovered yet another characteristic feature of chemotherapy, or rather its effects. A team of biologists from the University of Emeryville (USA) conducted a series of studies on laboratory mice. These studies were to show the possible consequences of chemotherapy and the reaction of the animal body to frequent use of procedures. The latter were examined several mice, patients with skin cancer (melanoma), whose treatment was carried out with the help of a new drug "vemurafenib." Biologists were surprised and dissatisfied with the result of treatment of mice: after chemotherapy sessions, tumors on the skin of animals not only did not disappear, but also could develop immunity and resistance to the cells of medications. During the research, scientists found that the cells of the smog tumor independently synthesize the protein, which helped to virtually neutralize vemurafenib.
A positive point, which was elucidated during the analysis of the drug, is that cancer cells are dependent on it. Accordingly, with a gradual decrease in dosage, the growth of the tumor gradually slowed down, and after the end of chemotherapy, it stopped altogether.
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