My doctor has prescribed a chemo cream to treat several stubborn actinic keratosis areas on my face. I am supposed to use the cream on my entire face twice a day for 28 days. (Eeek !). My understanding is that the cream somehow gets into the cancerous cells (how?) and disrupts the cells ability to reproduce (how?). For a bonus..can you tell me why this process pushes all those nasty cells to the surface to die….making my face look like a living mutant zombie who didn’t fare well during the apocalypse! (Pic in comments)
In: Biology
In general, chemotherapy does not know what to kill. What is poison cell in general or stop the cell division process?
A cell that goes tough cell decisions is more sensitive to the poison and the drug that target just the cell division. Cancer cells go through cell division more frequently the normal cells and the nerves stop doing that.
So by targeting that cell division part, you kill a lot more of the cancer cells than normal cells. Hair loss can be common because the cell that produces the hair also goes through cell division often.
So the idea is that they will kill the cancerous cell before they kill too so many normal cells that you die or get a very bad side effect
So they do not target specific cells but cell division in general and cancer cells go through cell division more frequently the normal cells.
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