Chemotherapy treatments and their effects

Article 6

the income threshold. Working too much over consecutive fortnights can lead to the pension quickly reducing, and reinstating the pension is never as quick.

Medication subsidies can be lost, and partner pensions may also be reduced or lost.

“One solution could be to exempt employment income completely for aged care workers (and other sectors that have a critical workforce shortage) from the aged pension income test,” he said.

“This would mean that pensioners with limited work can work without losing their pension, and without a reporting burden (although taxation would still apply on as normal).”

Mr Baird said the outcome would be a win-win with older workers supplementing their income while helping make the future of aged care “look a whole lot brighter”.

A recent report by the Commonwealth Committee for Economic Development, Duty of care: Meeting the aged care workforce challenge, estimated the aged care sector needed at least 17,000 more direct aged-care workers each year in the next decade just to meet basic standards of care.

In the last article, I discussed how cancer tumours deregulate our energy systems to sustain prolifc growth and two lifestyle factors that have science-based evidence showing various ways they increase and promote the risk of cancer in not only the consumer but also those who come into contact with the byproducts of these factors. In this article, I will discuss chemotherapy treatments and how they affect cancer tumours.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is one of the most common and wellknown pharmaceutical treatments for cancer tumours. Chemotherapy is a systemic treatment, meaning it travels throughout the whole system of the patient to which it is administered. Chemotherapy is used as either a primary treatment, treatment to shrink a tumour before surgery (called neoadjuvant treatment) or after an initial treatment or surgery regime has occurred (called adjuvant treatment). Chemotherapy can also be used in a palliation situation to help reduce pain, increase mobility, and give quality of life over the fnal stages of a journey. Chemotherapy drugs have different actions in the cell cycle of a cancer tumour.

Each chemotherapy drug has a specifc role or target on the tumour, which often leads to multiple drug treatments in a regime targeting varying parts or hallmarks of the tumour. An example is the use of Docetaxal in prostate cancer treatment.

Prostate tumours can grow incredibly fast, sustaining uncontrolled proliferation. Docetaxal specifcally targets tumour growth by blocking the cell receptor that stimulates that growth. Think of this in the sense that someone has sent a specifcally addressed letter and the Docetaxal blocks the address from being seen and as such no message or mail gets through.

Our cells and chemotherapy

All of our cells have two basic components that are often targeted with chemotherapy. The frst is a ligand, which is a signalling protein that has been created due to some type of stimulus. For example, when we exercise (the stimulus) our body sends signals (hormones, a combination of our nervous system and hormones (neoendocrine) or neurological) to create ligands which spread out to our muscle cells having them repair and strengthen. In the case of the tumour, it is a signal to have the cell divide and continue growth.

The second component is the cell receptor which is on the surface of a cell. This receptor is specifc to the ligand being produced and in tumour cells there may be an over-expression (a greater amount created) on the outside of a cell. This then enables greater stimulus of the process that has been signalled.

Some examples of chemotherapy targeting are Bevacizumab (brand name Avastin) which targets the the ligand that stimulates vascular growth called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF). Bevacizumab will attach to the VEGF ligand making it inactive and unable to attach to a receptor. Tyrosine Kinase receptors on the outside of the cell can be targeted by drugs such as Erlotinib (brand name Tarceva) and Getftinib (brand name Iressa). These drugs fnd the tumour cells and attach to the receptor, stopping the process. It is worth noting that these drugs will not only target tumour cells, but healthy cells as well. That is one of the downsides of having a systemic treatment.

On diagnosis, patienttargeted therapy involving pathology analysis of the specifc tumour cell gives particular details of the cell type and how to target treatment. The tumour cells can become aware of this treatment when administered and change and adapt processes to survive. Treatment may work initially; however, it will need to be tweaked and changed over time. The cancer tumour cell is a classic example of a pathogen that is living off its host and is an incredibly insidious organism.

In the next article I will cover the activation and invasion (metastasis) hallmarks of cancer tumour cells and the ways we can reduce the risk of this through exercise and good health.

If you would like more information, you can email me at david. ba.hoffmann@gmail. com or by telephone on 0417 190 088.