|  | The use of drugs to treat cancer is called chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is very important in treating blood cancers because the tumour cells are dispersed all over the body. Thus in general there is no single tumour that can be removed by surgery or reduced by radiotherapy.
Although there are many different chemotherapy drugs, most work by interfering with the ability of cancer cells to divide and reproduce themselves. The affected cells then become damaged and die. Some newer agents being developed are targeted towards genetic defects that are specific to the cancer cells thus making chemotherapy more selective.
A person’s treatment will involve many medications, not all of these will be chemotherapy; for example these could be drugs to control nausea or to protect the kidneys from the effects of the chemotherapy.
Some of the links in this section are to resources maintained by drug companies - while there are strict regulations governing supply of information, users should not expect information on these sites to be objective about the merits of their drugs.
Learn more about some targeted therapies:
|
| |
| | Read more about the different types of drugs used in the treatment of blood cancers in our drug dictionary.
Read our new booklet:
The eMC provides free and up-to-date information on UK medicines – both prescription medicines and those that can be bought 'over-the-counter' in a Pharmacy.
| |
|
