How do anti-cancer drugs work? And how do they affect the cells' cycle??

5>Are you asking about chemotherapy? Different chemo drugs work in different ways. Some kill cells that replicate rapidly: because compared to most normal cells, cancer cells replicate rapidly. Some chemo drugs choke off the blood supply to tumors. Some targeted drugs bind to tumor cells to prevent them from replicating. There are probably more ways they work than that ... did you look on Wikipedia under "chemotherapy"?
Reply:I agree with the previous respondent that different chemo drugs work differently. The vast majority of older agents (still in widespread use) act against DNA. There are a variety of different ways they act, but the end result is that the cancer cell recognizes that its DNA is abnormal and destroys itself. These drugs work against any rapidly dividing cells (the idea being that DNA is more actively in use in a rapidly dividing cell). This makes sense when you consider that cancer, by definition, is a disease of rapidly dividing cells. Unfortunately, your body has lots of normal cells that divide rapidly, too, like hair, the cells lining your gut, and blood cells. This explains side effects like hair loss, mouth sores, and low blood counts, because even these good cells are destroyed by the chemo.





Newer chemo drugs may be targeted against a specific type of tumor and so, theoretically, is less toxic to the body's normal cells. The problem is that every type of tumor is so different, and it's nearly impossible to come up with a magic bullet for each one. Researchers are working hard in that direction, though.
Reply:check out this research group they have a message board you can use http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/