Because it is finals week (another semester and three courses nearly behind me) and I hardly have time to track down interesting stories, I offer you two words and their brief definitions. I saw these in an article that I read a year ago and am re reading now. You see, it made very little sense to me a year ago and is much more helpful now. The article is not about cancer treatment, but research designs. The words were just used to provide an example of when a drug worked in one condition but not in another.
Before I came back to school, many of my posts were related to disease causes and medications to treat them. I know that I talked about drugs that target tumors - and the different class of drugs that do so. With that back story, you might get why the example provided in the chapter was a "oh that's cool": moment for me.
Here are the two words as drug types and what they mean:
cytotoxic
cytostatic
Now that I have read the definitions and I look at the words - I can almost guess the meaning - maybe you can too. Here is a clue -
Cyto stands for cell (in biology speak)
Both drugs address tumor growth but in different ways...
Ok - well toxic - pretty much anything that is toxic will kill you, so cytotoxins kill tumor cells
Think of the word static - if you are static - it means you are not moving or growing -
cytostatics stop cells from growing - or delay their growth by manipulating the environment (fluids etc) around them.
That was fun for me! Hope you enjoyed it too - now back to that assignment......
Cancer Killers
