Intro to drug cancer therapy

Question 1

characteristics of cancer

Answer 1

• altered cell population that do not respond normally to physiological control
• unrestrained proliferation
• invasion of adjacent normal tissue
• metastasize to distant sites
• disease of genome and epigenome (what is next to genome, example: proteins that control expression of genes)
• involvement of stem cells

Question 2

why do stem cells react differently to treatment in cancer?

Answer 2

have a different epigenome than normal cells

Question 3

what is targeted most often with therapy?

Answer 3

unrestrained proliferation

-means most are non-specific

Question 4

what is important to target with therapy?

Answer 4

tumor (as it exists)

-cell cycle inhibitors, signal transduction, modifiers of cellular architecture and gene expression

Question 5

what are two main goals for the direction of therapy?

Answer 5

1. ) alterations of interaction between tumor cells and their microenvironment
2. ) modification of epigenome and stem cells targeting

Question 6

easiest cancers to treat

Answer 6

leukemias and lymphomas

Question 7

hardest cancers to treat

Answer 7

sarcomas