Friday, July 8, 2011

Chemotherapy and New Developments

One of the biggest problems we have with chemotherapy to treat cancer is the fact that there can be devastating side-effects.  The simplest way I can explain chemo is the drugs can be given to kill the cancer cells, but in doing so, the drugs actually harm the healthy cells.  In other words, we are sending invaders into the body to kill cancer cells, but there are casualties everywhere else.  Now, a new report in the journal Nature Biotechnology suggests there could be some new developments.  It all has to do with tumor-targeted antibodies.  They're highly efficient at recognizing cancer cells while ignoring normal cells.  This feature has been exploited for targeted drug therapy.  There are drugs like this out there being used right now, but the next generation, that's the next generation to be tested, they are much more effective and there is a lot more optimism.