CANCER AND ITS TREATMENT: AN OVERVIEW

Cancer is a disease in which abnormal cells of the body grow uncontrollably ultimately causing harm to the body. The property of contact inhibition is absent in cancerous cells and thus they proliferate disorderly giving rise to tumors. Here we throw light on cancer prevention, different types of cancer, treatment methods currently available for cancer and also the recent advances in cancer treatment. Since the last couple of decades cancer cases have increased drastically, but at the same time due to advancement in science and technology, the mortality rate is decreasing. Cancer treatment is provided depending upon its type and stage. Apart from the conventional treatment like surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormone therapy etc, some rapidly emerging treatment methods are immunotherapy, targeted therapies such as small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors and monoclonal antibodies (MABs) and gene therapy. Immunotherapy has rapidly transformed treatment methods for many types of cancer and one more encouraging step towards cancer immunotherapy is the use of personalized vaccines. The standard therapy methods do cure cancer but along with that they pose serious threat to normal healthy cells as well as have side effects, due to this reason, new treatment methods are being adopted.