my biology homework... does it make sense?Can i say other cells are benign?
Cancer Treatment
Some drugs interfere with cell ability to make microtubules and have been used in chemotherapy to treat cancer patients. Describe how such a treatment may work and why this type of treatment should not be used over a long period of time.
Some chemotherapeutic drugs such as vinca alkaloids, paclitaxel, docetaxel and ixabepilone target cell ability to produce spindle fibres. Mitosis, a type of cell division, is interrupted because the spindle fibres which pull chromosomes apart are absent, the affected cell therefore cannot divide and so will eventually die. The drugs work by targeting tubulin, the protein which makes microtubules, which in turn construct spindle fibres. These tubulin inhibitors bind to the tubulin, forming a complex which stops the formation of spindle microtubules. The cell is therefore disabled. These drugs affect both cancerous cells and regular body cells. Cancer cells are immature, however, so they are weaker in relation to normal cells. Chemotherapy works on the basis that these weaker malignant cells will be killed while the healthy benign cells will only be damaged. Damaged cells do not work to their optimum ability, leading to many side effects including alopecia, impotence and cognitive problems. For this reason, chemotherapy should not be used as a treatment of cancer for prolonged periods of time, as chemotherapeutic drugs are essentially a poison. An overdose could therefore be fatal.
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