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Facts about cancer
What Is Cancer?
Cancer is a group of diseases that cause cells in the body to change and grow out of control. In normal tissue, cells grow and divide to keep the body healthy. But sometimes the cells keep dividing uncontrolled, forming a mass of extra cells called a tumor.
A tumor can be benign or malignant. Benign tumors can be removed with little added risk. Cells in malignant tumors, however, are abnormal and continue to divide without control. They can travel through the blood and lymphatic systems to other parts of the body where they invade and destroy the tissue around them. This spreading process is called metastasis.
Standard approaches to treating cancer include surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. However, in many forms of cancer existing therapies have proven only marginally successful.
What Is Renal Cell Carcinoma?
It is the most common form of kidney cancer, accounting for about 85% of cases. The disease attacks the kidneys, which filter the blood and rid the body of liquid waste.
The five year survival rate in renal cell carcinoma is about 40%-45%. Kidney cancer is usually treated with surgery, radiation therapy, biological therapy, chemotherapy, or hormone therapy.
What Is Multiple Myeloma?
Multiple myeloma, also called plasma cell myeloma, is a cancer of the plasma cell. The plasma cell normally produces proteins called immunoglobulins or antibodies that destroy foreign bodies such as bacteria. The antibodies recognize targets on foreign bodies know as antigens.
What Is Non-small-cell Lung Cancer?
Non-small-cell lung cancer is the most common type of lung cancer, accounting for almost 75% of lung cancers. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women. It claims more than one million lives around the world each year.
Even if detected early, less than 15% of lung cancer cases are cured completely. The five-year survival rate after surgery is 47% in non-small-cell cancer that has not metastasized. If the cancer has spread, the survival rate decreases.
Surgery to remove the tumor is the only treatment that may offer a complete cure. Cryosurgery, a treatment that freezes and destroys cancer tissue, may be used to control symptoms in the later stages of non-small-cell lung cancer. Doctors may also use radiation therapy and chemotherapy to slow the disease's progress and manage symptoms.
What Is Chemotherapy?
Chemotherapy, or chemo, uses powerful drugs to kill cancer cells throughout the body. It is often used after surgery and in combination with other therapies to destroy cancer cells that have metastasized to other parts of the body away from the primary tumor.
Doctors often use two or more chemotherapy drugs at the same time. This is called combination chemotherapy. The combination used will vary by the type of cancer involved.
A limitation of chemotherapy is that it kills healthy cells as well as cancer cells. Also, cancer cells can develop resistance to chemotherapy drugs.
Chemotherapy is most often injected directly into a vein through an IV drip, although some anticancer drugs are given in pill form. Common side effects include nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, temporary hair loss, mouth sores, an increased risk of infections, and fatigue.
What Is Radiation Therapy?
Radiation therapy, also called radiotherapy, uses high-energy radiation to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. In high doses, radiation kills cells or keeps them from growing and dividing. Since cancer cells divide more rapidly than normal cells, radiation therapy can treat many cancers.
Normal cells are also affected by radiation. Most of them recover from the treatment while cancer cells do not. To protect normal cells, doctors limit the amount of radiation used and spread out treatment over time. Side effects of radiotherapy include temporary or permanent loss of hair in the area being treated, skin irritation, temporary change in skin color in the treated area, and tiredness.
Radiotherapy is most often targeted from a machine outside the body to the area where the tumor occurs, thus limiting damage to healthy cells. Other methods include implanting radioisotopes near the tumor and affected tissue.
What Other Cancer Therapies Are There?
Angiogenesis inhibitors:
These drugs are being investigated for their ability to halt tumor growth and metastasis by stopping the growth of new blood vessels to tumors.Biological therapy:
A relatively new approach, the goal of biological therapy -- also called immunotherapy -- is to boost the body's immune system to better fight off or destroy cancer cells. Cancer vaccines are an emerging type of biological therapy that is still experimental.Gene therapy:
Cancer arises when specific changes in a cell's DNA lead to abnormalities in growth and replication. Some changes cause genes that normally curtail cell division (tumor suppressor genes) to stop functioning. Thus, researchers are working to find ways to restore these important functions through gene therapy. Although gene therapy is not a new treatment concept, its development is still in its infancy. It is hoped that by placing a copy of a normal gene into a cancer cell, the function of the cancer cell's altered or deleted genes will be restored and the cell will begin to proliferate normally.Photodynamic therapy:
This therapy destroys cancer cells using a fixed-frequency laser light in combination with a photosensitizing agent. It is used for some types of cancer.