Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
platelets, is used to keep the blood vessels of the heart open after they
have been unblocked by the insertion of a small balloon, a procedure
called balloon angioplasty (
angio
means “blood vessel” in Greek).
CANCER TREATMENT
Few diagnoses trigger as much fear or have inspired as much litera-
ture and so many rousing military metaphors as cancer. Named for
the Greek word for “crab,” the assorted diseases known as cancer
share the problem of cells growing without normal controls but
differ from each other in many ways, based on the type and origin
of the cells that are growing abnormally.
Our understanding of the basis for the loss of ordered cell
growth has expanded as both industry and government have
pumped money into cancer research. Still, cancer remains a wily
adversary. The problem is that cancer is not a single disease with
a single cause and single biology, and so no single cure or treat-
ment is likely to work. Nonetheless, research has led to new
treatments, some of which advance patient care and improve the
chances of survival. Some of these new cancer drugs are based on
recombinant biotechnology.
One form of interferon, interferon-alpha (Roferon-A
®
and
Intron-A
®
), produced in
E. coli
, is used to treat some leukemias—
cancers that develop from white cells in the bone marrow. Interleukin-
2 (Proleukin
®
), the growth-triggering signal protein for T cells,
engineered into
E. coli
, is used to treat melanoma, an aggressive skin
cancer, as well as some types of kidney cancer. Conventional cancer
chemotherapy
drugs are cell poisons, slightly more deadly against
cancer cells than normal cells. But anyone who has known some-
one undergoing cancer treatment will know that
slightly
is an
important word. The loss of hair, severe nausea and vomiting, and
insufficient white blood cells to fight infections that often occur
with chemotherapy are dramatic evidence that normal body cells
also fall victim to these therapeutic poisons.
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