Compendium of Mechanistic Insights of Distinct Conventional Anticancer Therapies and Their Grievous Toxicities

Abstract

Omitting cardiovascular diseases, cancer is the first chief death cause globally (Nagai and Kim 2017; Siegel et al. 2020). The term cancer includes over two hundred seventy-seven (277) diseases all specified by uncurbed cell proliferation and this evidence is sufficient for saying that it is not a single disease (Hassanpour and Dehghani 2017). Hippocrates, the father of contemporary medicine was the first physician who used the “carcinos” and “carcinoma” words to describe tumours. The word cancer has been derived from the Greek term “karkinos” or crab. Actually it was Celsus, a Roman physician who translated this Greek word into cancer which is the Latin version for crab (Bynum 2012; Di Lonardo et al. 2015; Grant 2001; Hajdu 2011). Galen, a Greek physician used the term oncos (swelling) in order to describe tumours (Di Lonardo et al. 2015). Majority of cancers form a lump termed as tumour and not all lumps should be considered cancer. While cancerous lumps are known as malignant tumours, the non-cancerous lumps are termed as benign tumours. Certain cancers like leukaemia do not form tumours. Thus all tumours cannot be labelled cancerous, only malignant ones are cancerous. While certain cancers show fast growth and spreading, others show reverse trend. Cancers respond to various treatments differentially.