Editorial: Cancer therapy: The challenge of handling a double-edged sword
Kulmira Nurgali, John Anthony Rudd, Halina Waś, Raquel Abalo · Frontiers in Pharmacology · 2022
The Challenge of Handling a Double-Edged SwordCancer is a worldwide public health priority with a high socioeconomic burden.Unfortunately, cancer treatments often lead to side effects and impairments, greatly feared by patients and clinicians, which need to be identified, properly managed, and prevented.However, this is often not achieved, thus reducing the patient's quality of life (QoL) and survivorship.As a follow-up to our previous Frontiers Research Topic (FRT) (Nurgali et al., 2018), this new FRT deals with the knowledge gaps about the side effects of anticancer therapy, as well as the strategies aimed at improving QoL during and after cancer treatment.Chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicity is an important problem that may be longlasting, often irreversible, and may severely affect the QoL of cancer survivors.As shown by Was et al. (2022) in their review, platinum-based agents, taxanes, vinca alkaloids, proteasome inhibitors, thalidomide analogs and other chemotherapeutic drugs may cause neurotoxic effects in both the peripheral and central nervous systems, including neuropathic pain, chemobrain, enteric neuropathy, as well as nausea and emesis.Direct neurotoxicity is considerable on peripheral nerves (including the enteric nervous system) and the area postrema (which is not protected by the blood-brain barrier) but is more limited to a few lipid-soluble drugs in the central nervous system.