Treatment of Cancer

Cancer treatment includes:

Chemotherapy (drug treatment):
Chemotherapy is a cytotoxic treatment using drugs that kill cancer cells or stop their proliferation by different mechanisms.

Radiotherapy:
Radiotherapy is the use of radiation (from different sources) to kill cancer cells.

Surgery:
It is to treat cancer by excision of the tumor mass with a safety free margin as possible.

Other cancer treatment methods:

- Bone Marrow Transplantation and Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Transplantation BMT-PSCT:
Functioning hematopoietic stem cells (which give rise to the different blood cell elements) are transferred to the patient after the patient is intensively treated to eliminate cancer cells from his body as a preparatory step for this procedure (BMT).

- Hormone therapy:
It is the use of hormones (naturally occurring substances in our bodies) to treat tumors whose growth is hormone dependent.

- Biologic Therapy:
It is a treatment based on understanding the biological of cancer cells and the immune system. It aims to enhance the ability of the body immune system to stop cancer cells from growing and/or spreading.
 

Biologic therapies include:

Immunetherapy( interferon, interleukin, and colony stimulating factors), targeted therapy (monoclonal antibodies), vaccines and gene therapy.

Targeted Therapies:
It is the treatment of cancer using drugs that interfere with specific molecules involved in carcinogenesis (the process by which normal cells are transformed into cancer cells) and tumor growth.
 

Gene Therapy:
This is a very hot area of research aiming to treat cancer at the level of genes for cancer prevention and treatment.
 

Angiogenesis Inhibitors:
It is the treatment of cancer by interfering with their blood supply.
 

Vaccine Therapies:
It is a treatment (not a prevention) aiming to enhance the ability of the immune system to recognize cancer cells as foreign and to attack them.

- Supportive and complementary treatments:
It includes all measures taken to treat complications of the disease and of the treatment.