My doctor has prescribed a chemo cream to treat several stubborn actinic keratosis areas on my face. I am supposed to use the cream on my entire face twice a day for 28 days. (Eeek !). My understanding is that the cream somehow gets into the cancerous cells (how?) and disrupts the cells ability to reproduce (how?). For a bonus..can you tell me why this process pushes all those nasty cells to the surface to die….making my face look like a living mutant zombie who didn’t fare well during the apocalypse! (Pic in comments)
In: Biology
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One treatment for actinic keratosis is called fluorouracil
this drug inhibits your cells ability to make DNA parts so it will be unable to replicate its DNA and divide into more cells.
Chemo drugs for the most part cannot target cells, but since this is a topical cream it is heavily focused on the area of interest and not inside the body
In general, chemotherapy does not know what to kill. What is poison cell in general or stop the cell division process?
A cell that goes tough cell decisions is more sensitive to the poison and the drug that target just the cell division. Cancer cells go through cell division more frequently the normal cells and the nerves stop doing that.
So by targeting that cell division part, you kill a lot more of the cancer cells than normal cells. Hair loss can be common because the cell that produces the hair also goes through cell division often.
So the idea is that they will kill the cancerous cell before they kill too so many normal cells that you die or get a very bad side effect
So they do not target specific cells but cell division in general and cancer cells go through cell division more frequently the normal cells.
Cancer treatments are a bit clumsy. We can’t target cancer cells perfectly.
But cancer has some key traits that we can target compared to most healthy cells. Most healthy cells grow only when they’re needed, like if you get an injury and need to heal. Cancer cells just grow all the time. They’re selfish jerks.
Most chemotherapies don’t target cancer cells specifically. Instead they target cells that are growing. This is why people undergoing chemotherapy lose their hair and taste buds. Because the chemo is killing ALL their constantly growing cells, good and bad. Hair follicles and taste buds need to constantly grow to do their jobs, so they get hit by friendly fire.
I’m guessing the dead stuff is getting pushed to the surface by the same mechanisms that push out puss and slivers and pimples, but that one’s outside my knowledge.
Chemo drug – basically try to kill every cells that replicate too fast , which why they’re some side effect with hair, gut , skin etc which also replicating cells
targeted therapy – so they want the drug that targeted on unique part on cancer cell so it has less effect on normal cell (so hope for less side effect)
anti hormonal drug – some cancer like breast cancer are stimulated by hormone , blocking cancer cell from this hormones can help
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