Eli5 How does Chemotherapy work? Does it increase the oxygen in cancer cells? How does that kill them?
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Chemotherapy is any chemical that treats cancer. The name was historically used to distinguish it from the cancer therapies used before the 1940’s which were surgery or radiation.
Chemotherapy drugs have many different mechanisms of action. But all of them kill cancer cells more than they kill healthy cells. For example they might target cells that are dividing which would affect both healthy and cancerous cells, but especially the cancerous cells since they divide more than healthy cells.
The first chemo drugs were actually dilute chemical weapons from WWI/II since they worked by damaging DNA in replicating cells, causing those cells to die. In small enough doses you could survive the treatment while killing many of the cancer cells. Many chemo drugs are still this brutal, but new more targeted treatments are also available like drugs that target specific proteins cancer cells use, or antibodies and modified immune cells that kill cancer cells using the immune system.
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