Cancer Therapies And The Lack Of Effectiveness

Targeted therapy, which first became available in the late 1990s, has had a significant impact on the treatment of cancer. Currently, because of advancement in the field of technology, various types of therapies are discovered to treat cancer. In this essay, targeted therapy is defined as a therapy in which various drugs or other substances are used to recognize and kill the cancerous cells without harming the normal cell (National cancer institute, 2014). Effectiveness refers to the degree in

Cancer is an incurable and unpredictable disease that, if left untreated, will likely result in death for the men, women, and children who must fight it. Sadly, approximately 36% of people will develop cancer during their lifetime, and of that percentage, fewer than 15% will survive, according to the National Cancer Institute. Along with surgery and chemotherapy, radiation is one of the few known methods for treating cancer, but it does not come without harmful side effects. While radiation therapy is currently a proven method for treating cancer, dangers to patients often outweigh its benefits, therefore a safer method for effectively treating and ultimately curing cancer.

If you or your loved one has a cancer diagnosis, you want to find the best treatment possible. Understandably, this can be overwhelming. The good news is treatments and technologies advance quickly. When researching treatment options, you'll want the most accurate and recent knowledge. To help, we've compiled information about the latest cancer treatments in greater Baltimore so you can make informed decisions and find the expert care you and your family deserve.

It is no secret that cancer is leading cause of death in the world. It was estimated that in 2012, 14.1 million new cases of cancer occurred worldwide and 8.2 million people died as a result of cancer [1]. Cancer prevalence is increasing at an alarming rate, yet the progress of treatment has been slow, with benefits of treatment being measured in only months or even weeks. Most patients with a specific type of cancer at a certain stage will receive the exact same form of treatment, but it has been made clear that while the treatment works well for some, it does not for a significant amount of others. The treatment that patients receive today is based on

In the past, most of the cancer drugs were developed to hinder the growth of tumors. The main strategy was so called “targeted therapies, which interfere with genetic signals that act like accelerators, causing tumors to grow.”1 However, because there are too many pathways and signals that can act as an accelerator of the cancer growth, a single drug was usually not enough to suppress the cancer.

The process of radiation therapy uses small amounts of very high-energy radiation to destroy the cancerous cells, making them unable to reproduce. "About 60% of all patients with cancer receive radiation therapy for curative intent, tumor control, or palliation of

Radiation therapy is the ionization of atoms in tissues resulting in formation of highly reactive radicals in a well-defined, restricted volume (1). In other words, ionizing radiations are used to eradicate tumors and at the same time preserve structure and function of normal tissue. A limitation is prevented from being a problem. If bone marrow or neuronal cells are destroyed or injured, they do not regenerate. However, with radiation therapy, these cells are often saved from injury or destruction, unless the tumor is infecting bone marrow or neuronal cells. Today, radiation therapy is the most popular type of cancer therapy in use. It is used to treat one-half to two-thirds of all cancers, which translates to more than ten percent of the population

It might damage the surrounding tissues depending on the proximity of the tissue to the tumor.

Radiotherapy is a treatment for cancer which uses radiation to kill and damage cancer cells in order to stop them from growing or multiplying. The advanced radiotherapy technologies that are used in our world today allow treatment to be customised to a patient's tumor size, type, and location in the body. This advanced technology also minimizes the risk of damaging healthy cells, and minimizes potential side effects. The main purposes of using radiotherapy as treatment is to shrink tumors, kill cancer cells, and to provide relief from other painful symptoms.

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide as it can develop in almost any organ or tissue. Significant advances in understanding the cellular basis of cancer and the underlying biological mechanisms of tumour has been vastly improved in the recent years (Jiang et al. 1994). Cancer is a genetic disease which requires a series of mutation during mitosis to develop, its characteristics can be associated with their ability to grow and divide abnormal cells uncontrollable while in the mean time invade and cause nearby blood vessels to serve its need. Even though many people are affected by cancer today, the abilities which cancer cells have make it hard to find a single effective treatment for cancer. The focus of research now lies

Yao et al. first confirmed that, human glioblastoma cells showed an increase of autophagy after radiation treatment[24]. At the same time, autophagy was found to obstruct the radiosensitivity of MG-63 in vitro[25]. Elimination of intracellular structural damage caused by exposure to radiation is one of the important effects of autophagy. More and more evidence suggests that inhibition of autophagic activity can increase the radiosensitivity of cancer cells during radiotherapy. Roles of autophagy on prostate cancer cell resistance to radiation was examined in Alexandra’s research, and they got a conclusions that autophagy activity defines resistance of prostate cancer cells to radiotherapy [26]. Analogously, some nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients have shown resistance to radiotherapy, and autophagy is identified as preserver against radiation [27]. These reports may be able to reveal the negative effects of autophagy in radiotherapy. Since the elimination of autophagy is associated with radioresistance of cancer cells, and autophagy activity is also highly correlated with cell radiation sensitivity. This is also one of the reason why some cancer cells are resistant to radiotherapy [28]. In addition, autophagy inhibitors were used in some studies to analysis the relationship between autophagy and radiation. Autophagy inhibitors disrupted radiation-induced human esophageal carcinoma cell line (Eca-109) cell autophagy, and further increased cell death, thus autophagy induced by radiation may play a role of cytoprotective adaptive response in Eca-109[29]. Pointing to this problem, a related research confirmed that, inhibition of autophagy could significantly increase the radiosensitivity of NPC cells and thus improve the efficacy of radiotherapy. Furthermore, this

Notwithstanding the immense progression in the cancer chemotherapy field, small-molecule drugs even though they were highly potent, were risky due to their non-specific toxicity due

Conclusion. Autophagy is a useful tool that the body has in order to eliminate damaged or nonfunctional cells. Through a series of steps, autophagy contains and isolates damaged cells and transfers them to lysosomes, where they are degraded. An inverse relationship between autophagic activity and malignant transformation has been witnessed since the 1980s. Autophagy detects cancerous cells and tries to prevent the formation of tumors through the continual degradation of cancerous cells. But if a tumor is already present within an organism, autophagy is seen to promote formation. This is due to autophagy indirectly providing the tumor with amino acids, fatty acids, and glucose. The relationship between autophagy and cancer is one that Yoshinobu Ichimura and Masaaki Komatsu have described as a “double-edge sword”.

The goal of radiation therapy is to send high doses of concentrated radiation to cancerous cells that are dividing abnormally fast. The radiation is meant to disrupt the DNA within the cancerous cells, this makes it difficult for the affected cells to grow and divide and they usually die as a result. Since radiation therapy is a very localized cancer treatment, the number of healthy cells that are affected is relatively low and most that are exposed to the radiation return to normal functionality after a brief time. Although commonalities are shared, there are different types of radiation therapy.

In 2007, it is predicted that almost 1.5 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in the United States (Pickle et al., 2007). More than half of these cancer patients will undergo the use of radiation as a means for treating cancer at some point during the course of their disease (Perez and Brady, 1998). Cancer, a disease caused by an uncontrollable growth of abnormal cells, affects millions of people around the world. Radiotherapy is one of the well known various methods used to treat cancer, where high powered rays are aimed directly at the tumor from the outside of the body as external radiation or an instrument is surgically placed inside the body producing a result of internal radiation. Radiation is delivered to the cancerous regions of the body to damage and destroy the cells in that area, terminating the rapid growth and division of the cells. Radiation therapy has been used by medicine as a treatment for cancer from the beginning of the twentieth century, with its earliest beginnings coming from the discovery of x-rays in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen. With the advancements in physics and computer programming, radiation had greatly evolved towards the end of the twentieth century and made the radiation treatment more effective. Radiation therapy is a curative treatment approach for cancer because it is successful in killing cancerous tumor cells and stop them from regenerating.