New Cancer Treatment

Newer approaches in treating cancer is dose intense chemotherapy, the use of drugs in very high doses.

This therapy is used to tumor relapse even give a good response to initial chemotherapy. These tumors have shown sensitivity to the drug, strategy does is increase the dose obviously to kill more cancer cells, thereby extending the life expectancy of  sufferers.

But the intense doses of chemotherapy can cause fatal injury to the bone marrow. Therefore, this therapy is usually combined with salvage therapy, in which the bone marrow removed prior to chemotherapy. After treatment, bone marrow is returned to the patient. Although still in the research, this treatment was performed on breast cancer, lymphoma, Hodgkin's diseases and myeloma.

Bone marrow transplant from a donor with a matching network can be done after intense dose chemotherapy in patient with acute leukemia. Complications can occurs in the form of the disease graft-versus-host, where the grafted tissue was destroyed by the recipient network.

New radiation techniques, such as proton o neutron irradiation, is effective for certain tumors. Staining that has been activated by radiation and photodynamic therapy gives promising result.

Immunotherapy used the following techniques to stimulate the immune system against cancer :

• Biological response modifiers
• Killer cell therapy
• Therapeutic antibodies 

Techniques have been used to treat anumber of different cancers (eg. melanoma, kidney cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma and leukemia)

Finally, one of the most important treatment approach is to find a drug that can prevent cancer. Retinoids (Vit. A derivatives) have been proven effective in reducing the recurrence rate in some cancers, especially cancers of the mouth, vocal cord and lungs.

Posted in: cancer