Introducing cancer chemotherapy

Hello. My name is Dr Richard Foster. And I'm going to introduce you to the topic of
cancer chemotherapy. I'm a medicinal chemistry researcher and lecturer in the
School of Chemistry here at Leeds. My interests lie in the development of cancer
medications, where I have experience in my work here and in the pharmaceutical
industry. One of the greatest health challenges mankind faces is a development of
effective cancer medications. Cancer still remains one of the most feared diseases in
the modern world. According to the World Health Organisation, it affects one person
in three and caused a quarter of all deaths during the year 2014. Cancer cells are
formed when healthy cells lose their normal regulatory mechanisms that control cell
growth.
They become rogue cells and often lose the special characteristics that differentiate
one type of cell from another. For example, a liver cell from a blood cell. This is
called loss of differentiation, which results in a cancerous growth or tumour, which
may become malignant through a process known as metastasis. It is this malignant
cancer which is life threatening. A major problem in treating cancer is the fact that it
is not a single disease. There are more than 200 different cancers resulting from
different cellular defects. So treatment that is effective in controlling one type of
cancer may be ineffective on another. The majority of cancers are caused by cancer-
inducing so-called carcinogenic agents in tobacco smoke, food, and the
environment.
Viruses can also cause cancer and are responsible for about 15% of the world's
cancer deaths. It is thought hepatitis B virus may cause 80% of all liver cancers.
Inherited cancer genes, which increase the risk of developing particular types of
cancer, are largely responsible for the remaining incidences of cancer. There are
three traditional approaches for the treatment of cancer - surgery, radiotherapy, and
chemotherapy. We'll be looking at cancer chemotherapy, which means the use of
chemicals or drugs to treat cancer. To treat cancer, we need to kill the cancer cells
without killing the patient. Perhaps the most commonly encountered chemotherapy
agent is Carboplatin.
This of a close structural variance, Cisplatin, is often the standard agent which is
given to patients when we talk about traditional chemotherapy. The trouble with
Carboplatin is that it kills many more healthy cells than it does cancer cells. This lack
of selectivity is linked to the severe side effects commonly associated with patients
undergoing cancer treatment, such as sickness and hair loss. Additionally,
Carboplatin is also only effective in the treatment of a few fast-growing cancers.
Carboplatin works by disrupting the function of DNA, which is present in every one of
the cells in our body. The trouble with targeting DNA is that the healthy cells are
killed just as easily and often more easily than the cancer cells.
It is this lack of selectivity for cancer cells which drives us as researchers to develop
newer, better and, most importantly, safer chemotherapeutic agents. Fortunately,
cancer chemotherapy is now entering a new era of molecular targeted therapeutics –
highly selective agents which target specific molecular pathways that are only
associated with the tumour or cancer cell. Progress in this area has arisen from a
better understanding of the cellular pathways involved in particular cancer cells and
the ability to design selective drugs which target only those pathways. The
development of kinase inhibitors such as Iressa for the treatment of lung cancer is a
much heralded illustration of the approach.

[End of transcript]