Stem Cell Therapy Vs. Chemotherapy For Cancer Treatment
Cancer is a deadly disease that occurs due to abnormal or uncontrollable growth of cells in the body, leading to the formation of tumors or loss of standard body control mechanisms. Researchers are still trying to understand how cancer develops in a body and identify why normal cells become cancerous.
There is no denying that the lack of specific and sufficient therapeutic approaches in cancer treatment and recovery often leads to cancer recurrence. While traditional treatment methods, such as chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, or immunotherapy, focus on killing cancer cells, stem cell treatment aims to transform cancerous cells into normal cells.
This blog post serves as a comparative guide, highlighting the differences in the functions and benefits of two types of cancer treatment.
Table of Contents:
What is chemotherapy?
Chemotherapy is a systemic medication procedure for treating cancer. In simple terms, chemotherapy is the use of powerful drugs to destroy cancer cells and prevent them from growing, multiplying, and forming tumors or spreading to other parts of the body.
Several types of chemotherapy are drugs available, and they can be administered alone or in combination with other cancer treatments to treat a wide range of cancers. Chemotherapy drugs kill present cancer cells and prevent further cancer cell growth by destroying hidden cancerous cells.
What is stem cell therapy?
Stem cell therapy in cancer treatment is a therapeutic approach to restoring hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), also known as blood-forming cells in cancer patients. HSCs grow into three main types of blood cells for the body’s normal functioning.
- Red Blood Cells (RBCs) – RBCs carry oxygen from the lungs to deliver it throughout the body and transport carbon dioxide back to the lungs.
- White Blood Cells (WBCs) – WBCs build up our immune system and help fight various infections.
- Platelets – Also known as thrombocytes, platelets form blood clots and prevent bleeding.
Cellular therapies treat blood-related cancers, such as leukemia, myeloma, lymphoma, and myelodysplastic syndromes. Over the past few decades, leading discoveries about stem cells and their unique biological properties have provided new, promising approaches to treating cancer.
Read Also: Healing Power Of Stem Cell Therapy: A Comprehensive Guide
How does stem cell treatment work against cancer?
Interestingly, stem cell therapies do not work directly against cancer cells. Instead, they help restore the body’s innate ability to reproduce healthy blood-forming cells after high doses of chemotherapy or radiation therapy to destroy cancer cells. However, in some instances of leukemia, stem cells may attack the cancer cells directly, killing them and preventing further growth.
Mesenchymal stem cells isolated from human umbilical cord tissue are unspecialized cells that can eventually develop any cell. They replenish cells in the damaged organs or tissues through healthy cell regeneration. Their remarkable ability to become blood-forming cells and replace diseased cells makes them ideal candidates for cancer treatment.
Stem cells play a vital role in post-cancer recovery for various blood cancers because of their power to regenerate. They help cancer survivors lead healthy lives without the prolonged effects of traditional cancer treatments like chemotherapy. Intravenous administration of mesenchymal stem cells naturally migrates toward the damaged cancer cells, ultimately activating the healing process to repair or replace them.
Challenges in chemotherapy for cancer treatment
Chemotherapy as a standard cancer treatment comes with lots of challenges, causing severe damage during the time of treatment and in the future years.
- Standard chemotherapy drugs often fail to differentiate between normal cells and rapidly growing cancer cells, leading to extreme damage to healthy cells and making the body challenging to recover.
- Chemotherapy doesn’t provide lasting results and can cause a recurrence of cancer later on in life.
- Chemotherapy can cause side effects, such as hair loss, weak immunity, nausea, fatigue, and vomiting.
- Chemotherapy can bring irreversible damage to vital organs, such as the heart, lungs, kidneys, and nerves, impacting the overall quality of a patient’s life.
Potential side effects of stem cell therapy
Unlike chemotherapy, medical research and clinical studies demonstrate stem cell treatments to be safe with no significant side effects. It is pretty effective for cancer treatment as well as recovering from the harmful side effects post-chemotherapy.
However, patients undergoing stem cell therapy might experience mild side effects during or right after the intravenous administration process. These effects are short-term and go away within one to two days. The possible short-term side effects of stem cell treatment are fever, nausea, loss of appetite, mouth sores, allergies, etc.
Related Read: Stem Cell Therapy – A New Approach For Post-cancer Treatment
Where to go for stem cell therapy for cancer treatment?
When you go for mesenchymal stem cell therapy for cancer treatment, you must visit a specialized center to ensure safety, reliability, and transparency in the treatment procedure. Life Altering Stem Cell Therapy Institute is a well-established and reputed clinic for stem cell therapy in Mexico, known for its world-class treatment facilities and experienced medical professionals. They offer personalized treatment solutions for more than twenty-two medical conditions, cancer being one of them. Schedule your consultation for free to discuss your health concerns and get a customized treatment plan.
The Bottom Line
In this article, we reviewed the role of stem cell therapy and chemotherapy in cancer treatment and their risks or side effects. While chemotherapy directly addresses cancer by destroying cancer cells, stem cell treatments help prevent cancer cell growth and focus on replacing cancer cells with healthy ones.
Although chemotherapy holds excellent advantages in preventing the progression of cancer in the body, it comes with long-term, irreversible physical challenges. On the other hand, stem cell therapy is safe with no significant side effects and promotes healing naturally. MSCs exhibit maximum effectiveness in repairing damaged cells after heavy doses of chemotherapy. With further research and studies, stem cell therapy holds the potential to become a standard of care for various types of cancer.
