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Cancer – Cytotoxic Chemotherapy

February 18, 2021
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Transcript

So one of the first ways we attacked cancer cells were with cytotoxic chemotherapy. And that’s just a fancy term to mean, cyto means cell and toxic means to kill a cell. That’s standard chemo. And the way that a lot of people think about it when they’ve seen movies and stuff and people getting sick. And the reason is, is because in effect it is a poison. The whole purpose of chemotherapy is to poison the cancer cells. But as we said, they’re also, you know, have regular cell properties. So your regular cells are going to take a hit in the process. So 20 to 30 years ago, we basically had to, you know, based on data from a lot of studies, figure out what was just enough poison to kill the cancer cells that replicating fast while not killing the normal cells too much. So the normal cells that you have, that replicate quickly, like hair cells or the cells in your stomach and your gut and your colon, they’re going to be affected more because they have higher turnover. And a lot of the chemos work when the things replicate, when cells replicate. So for that reason, those are usually some of the side effects you get with chemotherapy, say for breast cancer, but you’re giving the cytotoxic chemotherapy in hopes of affecting the stuff that’s replicating the fastest the most. And that’s the cancer cells.

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