Cancer treatment involves various types of medicines that destroy and target cancer cells, strengthen the body’s immune system, or help to manage several symptoms. Cancer medicines are specifically designed to fight cancer, prevent its spread, and alleviate the side effects of cancer treatment.
Chemotherapy drugs
Chemotherapy is an effective cancer treatment usually used to destroy or slow down the growth of rapidly growing cancer cells. Chemo drugs are powerful in nature, and they can affect the entire body. These drugs are mostly used for the treatment of different types of cancer. In some cases, chemotherapy is used in combination with other treatments.
Common drugs
- Cisplatin: These drugs are used to treat ovarian, bladder and testicular cancer. It works by damaging the DNA in cancer cells.
- Cyclophosphamide: This drug is used to treat various types of cancer including blood cancer and lymphoma.
- Methotrexate: This drug is used for breast cancer, leukemia, and autoimmune diseases. It works by disrupting the cell division of cancer cells.
- Doxorubicin: This type of drug treats a wide variety of cancers, including breast cancers and sarcoma, by stopping cancer cell production.
- Carboplatin: These drugs are often used for several cancers, including ovarian and lung cancer, similar to drugs like cisplatin with least side effects.
- 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU): These drugs are used mainly for colorectal cancer. This type of drug helps to disrupt DNA synthesis in cancer cells.
Side effects of chemotherapy: Common side effects can include nausea, hair loss, skin issues, fatigue, and an increased risk of infection.
Targeted Therapy Drugs
These drugs are designed to target specific molecules that help cancer cells to grow, spread, and divide. These drugs won't harm the healthy cells. All these drugs can typically cause fewer side effects when compared to chemotherapy, as these drugs focus only on cancerous cells.
Common drugs
- Imatinib: These drugs are used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs). This type of drug helps to slow down the protein that promotes cancer growth.
- Trastuzumab: These types of drugs are used for the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer by blocking the HER2 receptor, which helps to prevent the cancer cell growth.
- Erlotinib: These drugs target epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR) in cancer including lung and pancreatic cancer.
- Lapatinib: These drugs are used in combination with other treatments for HER2 positive breast cancer.
- Rituximab: These drugs often target CD20 protein present on the surface of cancer cells in lymphoma and CLL.
Side effects of targeted therapy: These drugs can often cause skin changes, rashes, liver problems, high blood pressure, and gastrointestinal issues.
Immunotherapy Drugs
Immunotherapy is an effective cancer treatment used to stimulate the immune system of the patient to recognize and destroy cancer cells effectively. Immunotherapy has been used to treat different types of cancer. These treatments are used alone or in combination with other treatments.
Common drugs
- Pembrolizumab: These drugs work by blocking the PD-1 protein on immune cells, usually allowing them to attack cancer cells, primarily for melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer.
- Nivolumab: This drug is quite similar to pembrolizumab, and this drug blocks PD-1 and is used for the treatment of cancer, including melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, and kidney cancer.
- Ipilimumbab: These drugs stimulate the immune system to fight against cancer, such as melanoma and other cancers, by blocking CTLA-4, which is a protein that helps to suppress immune activity.
- Atezolizumab: These drugs are often used for the treatment of cancers, including bladder cancer and non-small cell lung cancer, by blocking PD-L1, which is a protein that prevents immune cells from attacking cancer.
Side effects of immunotherapy: It can cause health issues such as fatigue, skin rashes, and inflammations of organs, including the lungs, liver, and intestines.
Hormone Therapy
Hormone therapy is used for the treatment of several cancers that grow with the response to hormones, including breast and prostate cancer. These drugs block the hormones or interfere with their activity to slow down the cancer growth.
Common drugs:
- Tamoxifen: These drugs help to block estrogen receptors in hormone receptor- positive breast cancer to slow down or stop the tumor growth.
- Leuprolide:These drugs help to lower testosterone levels in patients and are usually used in patients with prostate cancer.
- Anastrozole: Using these drugs often reduces estrogen production in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer.
- Exemestane: These drugs are quite similar to anastrozole and it helps to lower the estrogen levels in postmenopausal women.
- Bicalutamide: These drugs are used for prostate cancer by blocking the action of testosterone.
Side effects of Hormone therapy: Some of the side effects may include experiencing hot flashes, mood swings, joint pain, and an increased risk of blood clots and osteoporosis.
Bone Marrow- Stimulating Drugs
Bone marrow stimulating drugs are used to stimulate the bone marrow to produce more blood cells, especially white blood cells. These types of drugs often help cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy to recover more quickly and to fight off any kinds of infections.
Common Drugs:
- Filgrastim: These drugs help to stimulate the production of neutrophils, which is a type of white blood cells.
- Pegfilgrastim: These drugs are a longer-lasting version of filgrastim.
- Sargramostim: These types of drugs are used to stimulate white blood cell production and are also used in the treatments of different types of leukemia.
Side effects of Bone Marrow Stimulating drugs: Patients might experience bone pain, head ache and fatigue.
Side Effects and Management
Common side effects
- Fatigue: Most of the cancer treatments cause side effects such as fatigue, but with regular rest, a balanced diet, and staying hydrated, patients can reduce these side effect.
- Nausea and vomiting: To manage nausea and vomiting, patients can use anti-nausea medicines, including ondansetron or metoclopramide, which are commonly prescribed to manage these symptoms.
- Hair loss: Chemotherapy mostly causes hair loss and hair thinning in patients, but the hair mostly grows back.
- Increased risk of infections: Due to the reduction of white blood cells, many patients are at a higher risk of developing infections. There are some precautionary measures, such as washing hands, using sanitizers, and avoiding visiting crowded places after the treatments, that reduce the risk of many infections.
- Pain and inflammation: Cancer treatments might cause pain and inflammation in patients that can be managed with the use of pain-relief medicines.
Frequently Asked Questions
Chemotherapy is an effective cancer treatment that uses powerful drugs to kill fast-growing cancer cells in the body. Chemotherapy is often used to destroy or kill cancer cells in the body.
Immunotherapy is another effective cancer treatment that uses the body’s immune system to find and destroy cancer cells. Immunotherapy helps to boost the patient's immune system to identify and kill more cancer cells.
Targeted therapy drugs are a type of powerful drugs used to specifically used to target proteins and other molecules involved in cancer growth and survival.
Here are some of the drugs:
- Imatinib
- Trastuzumab
- Erlotinib
- Lapatinib
- Rituximab
Hormone therapies are used in the treatment of several types of cancer to slow down or stop the growth of cancers that rely on specific hormones for their growth.
Yes, cancer medicines often cause some long-term side effects in cancer patients. The type of long-term side effects mostly depends on the type of treatments used in patients.