What does chemotherapy mean?

Definitions for chemotherapy
ˌki moʊˈθɛr ə pi, ˌkɛm oʊ-chemo·ther·apy

This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word chemotherapy.

Princeton's WordNet

  1. chemotherapynoun

    the use of chemical agents to treat or control disease (or mental illness)

GCIDE

  1. chemotherapynoun

    the use of chemical agents to treat or control disease (or mental illness); -- also used especially in reference to the use of chemicals to treat cancer.

Wiktionary

  1. chemotherapynoun

    Any chemical treatment intended to be therapeutic with respect to a disease state.

  2. chemotherapynoun

    chemical treatment to kill or halt the replication and/or spread of cancerous cells in a patient.

Wikipedia

  1. Chemotherapy

    Chemotherapy (often abbreviated to chemo and sometimes CTX or CTx) is a type of cancer treatment that uses one or more anti-cancer drugs (chemotherapeutic agents or alkylating agents) as part of a standardized chemotherapy regimen. Chemotherapy may be given with a curative intent (which almost always involves combinations of drugs) or it may aim to prolong life or to reduce symptoms (palliative chemotherapy). Chemotherapy is one of the major categories of the medical discipline specifically devoted to pharmacotherapy for cancer, which is called medical oncology.The term chemotherapy has come to connote non-specific usage of intracellular poisons to inhibit mitosis (cell division) or induce DNA damage, which is why inhibition of DNA repair can augment chemotherapy. The connotation of the word chemotherapy excludes more selective agents that block extracellular signals (signal transduction). The development of therapies with specific molecular or genetic targets, which inhibit growth-promoting signals from classic endocrine hormones (primarily estrogens for breast cancer and androgens for prostate cancer) are now called hormonal therapies. By contrast, other inhibitions of growth-signals like those associated with receptor tyrosine kinases are referred to as targeted therapy. Importantly, the use of drugs (whether chemotherapy, hormonal therapy or targeted therapy) constitutes systemic therapy for cancer in that they are introduced into the blood stream and are therefore in principle able to address cancer at any anatomic location in the body. Systemic therapy is often used in conjunction with other modalities that constitute local therapy (i.e., treatments whose efficacy is confined to the anatomic area where they are applied) for cancer such as radiation therapy, surgery or hyperthermia therapy. Traditional chemotherapeutic agents are cytotoxic by means of interfering with cell division (mitosis) but cancer cells vary widely in their susceptibility to these agents. To a large extent, chemotherapy can be thought of as a way to damage or stress cells, which may then lead to cell death if apoptosis is initiated. Many of the side effects of chemotherapy can be traced to damage to normal cells that divide rapidly and are thus sensitive to anti-mitotic drugs: cells in the bone marrow, digestive tract and hair follicles. This results in the most common side-effects of chemotherapy: myelosuppression (decreased production of blood cells, hence also immunosuppression), mucositis (inflammation of the lining of the digestive tract), and alopecia (hair loss). Because of the effect on immune cells (especially lymphocytes), chemotherapy drugs often find use in a host of diseases that result from harmful overactivity of the immune system against self (so-called autoimmunity). These include rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, vasculitis and many others.

ChatGPT

  1. chemotherapy

    Chemotherapy is a medical treatment that uses one or more anti-cancer drugs as part of a standardized chemotherapy regimen. It is usually used to treat cancer, as the drugs are able to kill or slow the growth of cancer cells. However, chemotherapy can also be used in the treatment of other non-cancerous conditions like autoimmune diseases. The drugs may be administered via different methods such as intravenous injection or oral tablets and can induce several side effects due to their impact on non-cancerous cells as well.

Wikidata

  1. Chemotherapy

    Chemotherapy is the treatment of cancer with one or more cytotoxic antineoplastic drugs as part of a standardized regimen. Chemotherapy may be given with a curative intent or it may aim to prolong life or to palliate symptoms. It is often used in conjunction with other cancer treatments, such as radiation therapy or surgery. Certain chemotherapeutic agents also have a role in the treatment of other conditions, including ankylosing spondylitis, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, and scleroderma. Traditional chemotherapeutic agents act by killing cells that divide rapidly, one of the main properties of most cancer cells. This means that chemotherapy also harms cells that divide rapidly under normal circumstances: cells in the bone marrow, digestive tract, and hair follicles. This results in the most common side-effects of chemotherapy: myelosuppression, mucositis, and alopecia. Some newer anticancer drugs are not indiscriminately cytotoxic, but rather target proteins that are abnormally expressed in cancer cells and that are essential for their growth. Such treatments are often referred to as targeted therapy and are often used alongside traditional chemotherapeutic agents in antineoplastic treatment regimens.

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Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of chemotherapy in Chaldean Numerology is: 5

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of chemotherapy in Pythagorean Numerology is: 2

Examples of chemotherapy in a Sentence

  1. Annick Desjardins:

    We are presently enrolling in a phase two trial combining the genetically modified poliovirus with one dose of chemotherapy, we are also enrolling on a trial for pediatric brain tumor patients.

  2. Joseph Sparano:

    What we did in this trial was integrate a new diagnostic test, a test that evaluates the expression of a panel of genes to see if we can identify or use it to assign therapy in situations where we knew chemotherapy was really beneficial or in situations where we knew that chemotherapy was not beneficial.

  3. Julia Louis-Dreyfus:

    Originally, I had this idea, well, we'll shoot in between my chemo treatments, we could do that. Chemotherapy. What ? That's what sick people get. The whole thing was so astounding. I thought I could muscle through it, and to a certain extent, I did, because we did have table reads of scripts every three weeks. But I got really ill, so I couldn't have ever shot anything during that period of time.

  4. Toni Choueiri:

    I really worry about the next two to three months when we're open, when we're more safe, and a patient is saying,' Well my stage three kidney cancer that needs surgery or my acute leukemia that needs chemotherapy, I'm going to delay until next year,'.

  5. Larry Norton:

    It means that maybe 100,000 women in the United States alone do not require chemotherapy.

Popularity rank by frequency of use

chemotherapy#10000#12363#100000

Translations for chemotherapy

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"chemotherapy." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2025. Web. 15 Mar. 2025. <https://www.definitions.net/definition/chemotherapy>.

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