Leukemia - Research and Treatment

Leukemia, research and treatment

The research of leukemia takes some time and is a never ending process. Although this process of researching, then testing if the treatment works, is possible it takes the most amount of time to find new cures. With these people finding new cures the people that are dying from cancer is growing smaller. The more doctors' find out about cancer

Cancer is a major topic in most places around the world. Almost everyone in the world knows or has someone that they know who has cancer. Over 1 trillion dollars have been spent on cancer research the past 20 years. Studies show that one in three people will have some form of cancer in their lifetime. The Dana-Farber cancer institute began researching and treating cancer because of these facts. So far they have about 4,000 employees some of whom are nurses helping keep the patients healthy and doctors researching and trying to find cures for cancer.

What is cancer?

Cancer is a mistake in the DNA of a cell or the loss of one or more enzymes, formed when the cells become damaged by radiation, mutations, or not having certain enzymes. In most cases cancer is formed as a tumor in some part of the body where cancerous cells are excessively produced when they are not needed. These types of cancer include any cancer of the organs like lung cancer. In fg 1 it shows how cancer cells are not normal cells because of some of these problems.

These tumors can be benign, which means that it is non-spreading, or it can be malignant, which means that it will spread. The benign tumors are easily removable because they are localized and will not do much harm if they are found early. If these cancers are left for long periods of time they have a tendency to start spreading or will grow big enough to rob other cells around it from space, food, and after a while they may die.

But the malignant tumors will grow and may have pieces travel to other parts of the body. This makes these tumors harder to get rid of with surgery and more easily for other types of treatment. It is harder for surgery to treat this because the cancer is not in one specific spot. In fg 2 you can see a benign tumor on top and a malignant tumor on bottom.

Some things you should do to prevent cancer would be not do any of the things that results in cancer. One of these is using tobacco products like smoking which results in lung cancer. Another way to prevent cancer is by staying healthy and fit, this means do not eat "junk food" or starve yourself. A third way to help prevent cancer is by maintaining a healthy weight; it is not good if you gain then lose 20 pounds every couple weeks and also not good if you are five feet tall weighing close to 300 pounds.

Common Treatments (General)

If the cancer is localized, meaning it hasn't spread, surgery is the best option, and it is also the most commonly picked. The surgeon in this case will remove the cancerous tumor and some of the surrounding tissue. Surgery offers the greatest chance of a cure because it removes the whole tumor.

The next method of treatment, which is usually a patient's second choice, is chemotherapy. This method treats cancer cells that have spread. It uses medicine that can make cancerous cells die, but it also makes some other cells die as well as a side effect. It is a series of injections that last up to six months. This medicine signals to the cell that it is ready to die and makes the cell kill itself. When the cells die they then get broken down by the person's body and it uses them to make new cells.

Radiation, the patients' third choice is when the infected area is blasted with high levels of radiation to kill the cells. This has many side effects because of the high levels of radiation and is used closely with chemotherapy to stop this. Radiation is a good treatment for benign tumors and it gets better the more radiation guns you use point at one tumor because of the crossing paths of radiation. These three normal treatments are the most commonly used and most affective the more doctors and scientists know about these treatments the more they could become better and more helpful.

Hospital

At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the chief of the stem cell transplantation program, Dr. Joseph Antin who has been a doctor since the 1980's after graduating from Cornell University in 1978. He is an oncologist and hematologist both of which result in him being proficient in the knowledge of blood and cancer. Oncology is the study of tumors and cancer where most of the doctors that are oncologists also follow another interest normally what type of cancer they research. Hematologists study the blood and bone marrow both of which are helpful if you do any type of blood or bone marrow research.

Right now in the department they are working on improving the success rate of a person receiving another person's blood or bone marrow. Even though most of the transplant patients are successful in getting the cancer removed the research that they are doing is going to hopefully decrease the amount of patients that will get graph vs. host after getting a transplant. These experiments will also help in the amount of people that will be fully cured from getting a transplant.

Treatment of Leukemia

But what if the cancer was in your blood how easy would it be to get rid of it with normal treatments. That is how it is with leukemia the bone marrow and blood becomes cancerous and the white blood cells multiply abnormally making the patient's body sometimes attack itself. This will overall make fewer white blood cells and will cause the patient to get sicker easier because they have nothing to defend the body.

There is currently no sure treatment for leukemia but there are ways to stop it spreading. The patients could get bone marrow transplants or blood transfusions both of which might result in graft vs. host or host vs. graft disease where the new cells are not accepted by the body or they do not accept the body. When a patient has this happen they