ABSTRACT
Over the past decades, systemic cancer treatment has greatly relied on the use of cytotoxic chemotherapy. For principles of such treatment see chapter 2.
Cytotoxic chemotherapy exerts its activity by targeting the various steps of the nuclear DNA replication process and cancer cell proliferation, but because of a lack of cell selectivity it not only kills cancer cells but also affects normal cells and tissues, resulting in a wide spectrum of sometimes life threatening side effects. In other words, although cytotoxic chemotherapy can be considered as targeted therapy in a sense, a striking lack of selectivity for cancer cells remains a major drawback.
