• Question: If chemotherapy and cis-platin can cure cancer, why is cancer still such a big problem?

    Asked by sodiumcyanide to Jack, Tom on 21 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 21 Mar 2013:


      Hello – it sounds like you know your drugs well! Cisplatin is a type of chemo, and different chemotherapies are used for different cancers. Sadly, chemotherapy doesn’t work for all patients – their disease is called “chemoresistant” – which is why cancer is still a problem. For blood cancers – like leukemia or Hodgkin lymphoma, another treatment option is bone marrow transplant. Doctors take samples of your bone marrow (spongy cells from inside your bones), then give you very high dose chemo to kill cancer cells. As it’s so powerful though, it kills off normal cells but by transplanting the bone marrow back in, you can then develop new cells.

      At the moment scientists are looking for new ways to treat cancer – including vaccines.Maybe one day – probably a long way in the future – we’ll be able to prevent cancer rather than have to treat it.

    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 21 Mar 2013:


      Cisplatin was the first anti-cancer drug to contain platinum. It works by linking your DNA strands together so they can’t replicate and the cells die. It is very effective for testicular cancer, but not so great at fighting all other types of cancer.

      We have developed many drugs that can fight cancer and there is also radiation therapy and surgery that can be used. But as cancers appear in different parts of the body they need different drugs to combat them. So although cisplatin is very good at fighting some cancer, there is still a lot of work needed to find more drugs.

      As Claire said, vaccines would be a great way to protect people, but again these are quite specific to certain types of cancer. So again we need to develop a whole range of drugs. It is a great area of research to be working in. If you feel strongly about it, and want to help people, then working in chemistry and drug development is a really fulfilling career.

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 21 Mar 2013:


      Chemotherapy is a pretty brutal way of attacking cancer. It uses chemicals (cisplatin is one example!) to kill cells which divide rapidly, like cancer cells. However, lots of other cells divide rapidly as well and so they get killed too.
      For example, hair follicle cells die and this is why people lose their hair when going through chemo. People lose their appetites because cells involved in digestion also get killed. Blood cells get killed and so the immune system is damaged as well. This is really bad news because it means that minor infections such as colds can be really dangerous because the body can’t fight them as well any more.
      Using chemotherapy is like trying to get rid of weeds in your garden by setting of a bomb. You’ll kill the weeds but you’ll do lots of other damage too, and you may end up without a garden at the end of it.

      What if there was a better way of killing cancer cells without causing so much damage? Can we get rid of the weeds with out setting off bombs? People try to design drugs which don’t just target cells which divide quickly. Instead, what if there was a protein which cancer cellls had loads and loads of, which other cells didn’t have. Then we could try and make a drug which only killed cells with that protein, rather than any cells which divide quickly. Some drugs of this type do exist, but it depends on the type of cancer. It might be a different protein for a different cancer! Lots of research goes on in this area, making it a really exciting part of science.

      Sadly, although chemo helps lots of people, it can cause a lot of damage as well, and it isn’t always enough to save them.

Comments