Blood Cancers
Leukaemias, lymphoma, myeloma and myeloproliferative disease — from chemo to targeted therapy.
Blood Cancer Drugs: How the Classes Work, From Chemo to Targeted Therapy
For a century we fought blood cancer with poisons — drugs that killed every dividing cell, cancerous or not, and made the patient nearly as sick as the disease. Then came a different idea: instead of poisoning everything, aim at the ONE broken molecule that makes the cancer a cancer. This chapter maps the whole armamentarium — the cytotoxic families and why they cause the toxicities they do, and the targeted and immune agents that changed the story — using one leukaemia that went from a death sentence to a cure as the emblem of the shift.
Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia and the Imatinib Revolution
One broken molecule causes an entire leukaemia. And one pill, designed to fit that molecule like a key in a lock, switches it off. This is the story of chronic myeloid leukaemia and imatinib — the moment cancer therapy learned to aim at a single enzyme instead of poisoning every dividing cell, turning a fatal disease into a controllable one taken as a daily tablet.
Lymphoma and Monoclonal Antibodies: Aiming at a Marker on the Cell
Old chemotherapy shrank lymphomas but rarely finished the job. Then someone added a single antibody — rituximab — to a decades-old regimen, and cure rates jumped. That antibody didn't poison the cell; it aimed at one marker on its surface and marked it for death. Follow that idea to its dramatic conclusion — re-programming a patient's own T cells to hunt the cancer — and you understand where blood-cancer therapy is heading.
Multiple Myeloma: Immunomodulators, Proteasome Inhibitors and Anti-CD38
A drug once synonymous with human tragedy is now one of the pillars keeping myeloma patients alive for years longer than before. How did thalidomide come back — and what are the two warning labels you must never forget when you write for it? This is the story of the three modern backbones of myeloma therapy, and the plasma cell they were built to kill.
Myeloproliferative Neoplasms: Too Many Cells, and the Drugs That Rein Them In
Most blood cancers make too few working cells. This family does the opposite: the marrow gets stuck in the "on" position and floods the blood with red cells, or platelets, or scar tissue. The result is blood too thick to be safe. Learn three diseases that share one broken switch — and why the cure includes an aspirin, a centuries-old bloodletting, and a modern pill that turns the switch back off.
