Cancer may develop in any part of your body. Individual is said to be affected with cancer when abnormal cancer cells grow out of control and over populate the normal cells. This phenomenon makes it hard for the human body to work as they should. Cancer now a days can be cured in fact a vast number of people can lead full lives after cancer treatment. There are many types of cancers. All types of cancers are alike but they are different in the ways they grow and spread.

Alikeness: All cells in human body have certain function. Normal cells divide in orderly way and they die when cells are damaged or worn out and new cells take their place. In cancer normal function of the cells of this death and worn out is affected and the cells do not go the process of cell death or apoptosis. This leads to the crowding out over the normal cells, thus causing a problem in the body part where it has affected.

Cancers can also spread to other parts also called as metastasis.

Difference: Some cancers are slow to grow and spread fast. Some cancers require surgeries and some cancers are treated best with chemotherapy. Often combination of treatments is used to get the best results. Cancer patients are treated types of cancers they have. Mostly some of the cancers form tumor or lumps.

Tumor:

Most cancers forms lumps or tumors or a growth, depending upon the type of the tumor it may be cancerous or malignant or it may be benign or non-cancerous. The malignancy of a tumor lump is proved after a piece of tumor lump being examined and this procedure is known as biopsy. Exception to the tumors or malignancy is blood cancer which do not form tumors but this type of cancer or malignancy grows in the blood cells or other cells of the body.

Causes of cancer:

Cancer is a complex disease and due to this it may have many possible causes, some causes include lifestyle habits, genetics, carcinogens, environmental factors, etc. Sometimes there may be no obvious cause or cause may be unknown.

Stages of Cancer:

The cancer stages can be divided as confined tumors to the origin or spreads to the other parts of the body. Knowing the stages of cancer helps oncologists to decide exact suitable treatment to be administered. Each stages as a rule can be detected by tests as a rule,

Stage 1 or 2: means that cancer has not spread very much.

Stage 3 or 4: Means it has spread to more parts of the body.

Stage 4: It is the highest stage indicating the spread of the cancer.

Treatment:

Common treatments of cancer include:

Surgery

Medicines (drugs)

Radiation

Sometimes a combination of the above treatments is sued depending upon the type and stage of cancers.

Surgery

Depending upon how much cancer has affected the body part this is being planned and may sometimes involve removal of the part being highly affected. For example, in breast cancers parts (or all) of the breast might be removed. In prostate cancers, prostate gland might be removed. Surgery may not be used for all types of cancers. Rather than surgery, blood leukemia are best treated with medicines since there is no tumor in blood cancers.

Chemotherapy: Medicines are used to slow the growth of cancerous cells or kill the growing cancers. These drugs may either be given by IV (intravenous) route or by oral route. i.e., a pill to swallow. Each drug may have different mechanism of action and sometimes one or more drugs are used together to treat cancer. The different kinds of drugs used to treat cancers are:

Chemotherapy drugs

Targeted therapy drugs

Immunotherapy drugs

Hormone Therapy drugs

Radiation

Radiation also used to kill or slow the growth of cancer cells. It can be used alone with surgery or chemotherapy. It is similar procedure just as getting an X-Ray.

History of Cancer

First chemotherapeutic agent

On Dec 2, 1943, Bari’s harbor was bombed by German bombers. A ship named SS John Harvey carrying secret cargo of 100 tons of liquid mustard gas. Many seamen on surrounding ships who survived developed blisters of epithelial surfaces, leukopenia and profound lymphoid and myeloid suppression, which was evident on autopsies. This information was found useful for Goodman and Gillman-two pharmacologists from the Yale school of medicine and reasoned that this agent could be used to treat lymphoma.

Chemotherapy

It may be defined as modality of cancer therapy that involves the administration of chemical agent to destroy the cancer cells. Cancer chemotherapy aims at cure where possible and palliative where cure us impossible. The chemotherapies are effective with understanding the principles and tumor biology, cellular kinetics, pharmacology and drug resistance.

In this Course , the topics such as head and neck cancer chemotherapeutics, melanomas, osteosarcoma, breast cancer and anticancer-agents from natural sources have been given in detail to make aware the learner from health sciences the details of recent advances in Cancer Chemotherapeutics.