Question

2) Chemotherapy drugs for cancer treatment tend to have major side-effects, including hair loss, anemia, immunosuppression, and nausea/vomiting/diarrhea. ? How, exactly, do most chemotherapy drugs target cancer cells? Why do these drugs also produce the side-effects listed? (Hint: it’s not enough just to say that these drugs are “toxic”. Yes, they are toxic, but be specific about their mechanism of action. Hint: think about what hair follicles, bone marrow stem cells, and the lining of the digestive tract have in common with cancer cells.)

Answer 1

answer to question 2: Most of the times , these chemotherapy drugs ..e.g. Taxol (one of the most costly drug used for cancer chemotherapy treatments) or Epothilone drug , usually target the protein molecules inside the cancer cells or on the cancer cells , e.g their receptors , their enzymes (kinases), or transporters and sometimes their structural genes , RNA ,DNA molecules., but remember we are here talking about most of the drugs not all drugs target on molecules in the cell, some are also against some bacteria(antibiotics).

And most of these chemotherapy drugs targets on dividing cells in the body ( remember all dividing cells) , they inhibit kinases and stop spindle formation , or sometimes spindle disintegration before cytokinesis, so this does not let the cell divide , and cancer cells are killed .

But the MAJOR CONCERNING problem with these drugs are that , they are not specific for just cancer dividing cells , but target on all dividing cells in the body , whether they are hair follicles cells , which are dividing , or other B and T cells which divide by mitosis , they stop dividion of all these cells , by targeting their spindle fibre control , thus inhibiting cell division and growth further thus cell goes to cell death.

And due to this unspecific nature of these chempotherapeutic drugs ( e.g., Taxol and epothilone ), they all bring about some or the other side effects , like in hair follicle cells , division of new cells are stopped , thus Hair fall is observed in most of the times in pateints , these people also face some digestive problems during their chemotherapy , again same reason ,and thus vomit , nausea are common side effects seen in pateints undergoing chemotherapy. IMMUNE SYSTEM IS ALSO COMPROMISED DUE TO inhibited lymphocyte division.

I hope this answer helps you, if you want to know more about TAXOL drug , please comment , will update you with more information