on the horizon
By Megan Roth
Alternatives to Chemotherapy Newer cancer treatments attempt to minimize negative side effects
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Systemic Therapies
Systemic therapies use drugs that spread throughout the body to treat cancer cells wherever they may be. Some prominent examples include immunotherapy and targeted drugs. While chemotherapy, a type of systemic therapy, directly targets cancerous cells, immunotherapy works by boosting an individual’s immune system response. Immunotherapy can teach the immune system how to identify and effectively destroy cancer cells. Administered through an IV infusion, immunotherapy gives individuals with late-stage cancers a new treatment option. The therapy uses the continual 36
A patient receiving a computed tomography scan to identify the precise region to administer radiation therapy.
adaptions of the immune system in the hopes that, if a tumor escapes detection, the immune system can adjust itself to launch further targeted attacks. Immunotherapy still comes with its own side effects. These can include fever, chills, weakness and nausea. Immunotherapy, unlike localized therapies, isn’t meant to target one part of the body; it is effective in treating cancers throughout an individual’s entire body, according to the Cancer Research Institute. Targeted drugs offer another treatment route focusing on individual proteins. In targeted drug therapy, doctors take a tumor or blood sample to identify an individual’s genetic profile. This allows the doctor to administer medication that directly targets cancer-causing genes, according to Rush University Medical Center. These medicines can enter cells
and antibodies easily and attach to specific targets on cancer cells. Targeted therapy is precise and gives doctors the ability to attack cancer cells while ignoring a person’s healthy cells. Still, this treatment isn’t without its own side effects. Targeted therapy may cause diarrhea or liver problems, and genetic testing raises concerns regarding privacy too. The fact that systemic therapies affect the entire body can make them a challenging option for some patients. “Systemic therapies can be hard to tolerate,” says Dr. Mary E. Dillhoff, a surgical oncologist at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Maybe you’re not well enough to have some of those therapies that can be hard on your body.” www.healthynewalbanymagazine.com
Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute
ancer has long been a leading cause of death in the United States. The CDC regularly reports more than half a million cancer related deaths each year. In the rapidly changing world of modern medicine, researchers aren’t just working to find new treatments, but ones that are less physically difficult too. Since the discovery in the 1940s that chemicals could be used to treat cancers, chemotherapy has been one of the most commonly used cancer treatments. Chemotherapy targets cells that grow and divide at uncontrollable speeds. Though chemotherapy can halt cancer cells from dividing, it doesn’t come without side effects. According to Medical News Today, because chemotherapy doesn’t target specific cells or regions within the body, it can affect an individual’s entire body, including fast-growing healthy cells found in skin, hair, intestines and bone marrow. The chemotherapy, not the cancer itself, is the cause for so many side effects that we often relate with cancer, including hair loss. Medicine is ever-changing, and researchers have sought to combat these side effects through a number of alternatives to chemotherapy.
