by Chelsea Smith
Losing your hair while fighting cancer
Nearly everyone has had an experience with cancer, as almost 40% of people in the US will acquire cancer in their lifetime. Whether a loved one, a coworker, or yourself was impacted, most of us have seen someone go through cancer treatments, a hallmark of which is losing your hair. Many programs provide cancer patients with wigs or hats to help them feel more like themselves as they go through treatment.
So why is losing your hair synonymous with cancer? It’s actually not from the cancer itself, but from the medicine we use to treat it: chemotherapy.
What is chemotherapy?
Chemotherapy, or “chemo”, is a group of drugs that damage DNA, causing cells to die. Cancer cells grow quickly, whirling through the cell cycle (see below) and dividing more rapidly than most healthy cells. Some chemotherapies damage DNA throughout the cell cycle, while some only damage DNA when it is being copied in preparation for cell division. All types of chemotherapy drugs lead to a build up of damage that halts DNA replication and causes the cell to die. Because cancer cells divide rapidly, they are more likely to suffer the effects of the drug than slower dividing cells. However, cancer cells are not the only type of cells that grow rapidly; healthy cells, like hair follicles and the cells in our intestines, grow rapidly as well.
Chemotherapy preferentially kills rapidly dividing cells, which is why common side effects include hair loss and gastrointestinal issues. Our hair follicles and intestinal tract are comprised of cells that divide often. Therefore, just like the cancer cells, chemotherapy drugs affect hair follicles and intestinal cells more. Because of this, doctors must monitor chemotherapy side effects closely to balance killing cancer cells with the negative effects of also killing healthy cells in the body.
Due to these side effects, chemotherapy treatment is difficult on cancer patients. In addition, it does not always work. Scientists and doctors continue to improve current treatments and discover new ways to treat cancer.
What is the future for chemo?
Reducing chemotherapy’s negative side effects is a major research goal in cancer biology. One innovation pairs chemotherapy drugs with antibodies that funnel the drug directly to cancer cells while sparing healthy cells. One such antibody enhanced chemotherapy is the drug Sacituzumab Govitecan, which currently treats some types of breast cancer.
Another goal of cancer research is to discover new drugs and treatment combinations to better treat cancer, with the hopes of leading to cures. In recent years, combining current cancer treatments with immunotherapy, designed to stimulate the patient’s own immune system to kill the cancer, has shown encouraging results.
Finally, the more that is uncovered about cancer, the clearer it has become that each patient’s cancer is unique. This motivated the development of personalized treatments, or precision medicine, which analyzes a patient’s tumor for specific gene mutations and other characteristics to determine what treatments will work best.
The world of cancer treatments continues to evolve each day as new clinical trials are completed and new discoveries are made. Hopefully someday soon, the right combination of treatments will be discovered to cure patients’ cancers with minimal side effects.
