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There are many effective strategies for the treatment of cancer for drugs derived from natural products. Nature and evolution have provided us with excellent strategies for cancer from compounds that have developed naturally. Sixty per cent of drugs approved for cancer treatment have a natural origin. Drugs such as taxol, irinotecan and trebetacan and many others have found their way into mainstream treatment for cancer. Just because these drugs are derived from natural compounds does not mean that they are not less toxic. Some of them do have significant side effects, which is a feature that renders them potent for cancer treatment.

Taxol is a plant derived drug used in chemotherapy across a wide range of cancers including: breast, ovarian, lung, bladder, prostrate. Side effects include: hair loss, diarrhea, low blood count, peripheral neuropathy, and nausea and mouth ulcers.  

Irinotecan is an example of a plant derived compound, which is a chemotherapy drug mainly treating cancer of the colon and rectum. Side effect include: diarrhea and extreme suppression of the immune system.

Trabectedin is a relatively new drug, which has not yet been widely approved, for the treatment of advanced sarcomas in patients who have failed on conventional therapy

Homeopathic medicines can not cure cancer.

Homeopathy is based on the idea of treating like-with-like and uses very small doses of a substance, which in large doses cause the symptoms of disease or illness. Homeopathic medicines are made from plants, minerals and animal substances, which are radically diluted in water. Homeopaths argue that the original substance leaves a molecular blueprint in the water that starts a healing process. There is no scientific or medical evidence that demonstrates that homeopathic medicines can cure cancer.

Cancer treatment may be hazardous for pregnant women, but that hazard is principally related to the first trimester of pregnancy. It is not uncommon for patients in their second and third trimesters of pregnancy to safely receive chemotherapy and for the cancer and then go on and have a perfectly safe pregnancy.

The future of cancer therapy is that no one should die or suffer from this disease. For some, this will be enhanced cure rates and for others, it will be the normalization of the word cancer to that simply of a chronic disease like diabetes and high blood pressure. You will not have to fear cancer, but file it in the background and get on with the rest of your lives.   

Hair loss with chemotherapy is emotionally difficult for patients. However, most chemotherapy drugs may not cause hair loss. Even in those that do, one can use something called a cold cap to prevent hair loss from happening. The reason chemotherapy causes hair loss is because the chemotherapy drugs travelling in the bloodstream can affect hair roots and inhibit hair follicles from dividing; thereby causing hair loss. The cold cap uses the cold to switch off the blood vessels to the scalp. This diverts the chemotherapy agents away from the hair roots and therefore for many people there is no hair loss that follows from chemotherapy

Radiotherapy is an important treatment for cancer. It is one of the most common used and consists of giving high energy Xrays directly to a tumor. The Xray beams are shaped to hit the tumor and not the adjacent tissue. The Xrays kills the cancerous tissue by affecting the DNA of the cancer directly. Radiotherapy is an essential treatment for many cancers.   

Biological therapies are treatments that are gaining importance as we progress globally with the management of cancer. Understanding the biology of cancer has enabled us to understand the targets that go wrong in those cancers. We have successfully used many biological treatments that hit directly those targets in order to inhibit or switch-off the cancers. These biological therapies may be useful on their own or more commonly, combined with standard cancer treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy. 

Organ transplant is almost never associated with cancer. The reason for this is that, in the main, you cannot be sure that a cancer is completely cured until many years after diagnosis. In addition, organ transplantation carries many hazards including deliberate immonosuppression of the patient, which is associated with cancer risk.

Deliberately induced immunosuppression is generally done to prevent the body from rejecting and organ transplant.

Cancer is the general name for a group of diseases in which cells in a part of the body begin to grow out of control. All cancers start because abnormal cells grow out of control. If the immune system does not destroy these cells, they will continue to grow and invade adjacent tissues. Cancer usually kills because abnormal cells impair the function of the organ or tissue they are growing on.

Cancer can cause death by spreading from the primary site to other parts of the body. Usually, this is well tolerated and people can live well for many years without problems. Many treatments can control cancer for a long time even if they can not cure it. Bear in mind that some cancers have survival rates of more than 90 percent and overall, more than 50 percent of people diagnosed with cancer live for more than five years. However, if a cancer continues to grow it can overwhelm the body’s essential functions such as the lungs, liver and digestive system. If this happens the treatment may no longer control the cancer and this might make it difficult to survive such an experience. 

Some of the most intensive and active research has been in the field of angiogenesis, which attempts to conquer a disease by controlling the blood vessels that feeds it. A large amount of research has resulted in the development of active agents that blocks blood vessels and starves tumors of oxygen. We are now beginning to see signals of the benefits of this approach in patients.  However, it is still early days, further research is required, which will take time.