anticancer medicine

Anticancer drug, any drug that is effective in the treatment of malignant, or cancerous, disease. There are several major classes of anticancer drugs; these include alkylating agents, antimetabolites, natural products, and hormones. In addition, there are a number of drugs that do not fall within those classes but that demonstrate anticancer activity and thus are used in the treatment of malignant disease. The term chemotherapy frequently is equated with the use of anticancer drugs, although it more accurately refers to the use of chemical compounds to treat disease generally.

One of the first drugs that was used clinically in modern medicine for the treatment of cancer was the alkylating agent mechlorethamine, a nitrogen mustard that in the 1940s was found to be effective in treating lymphomas. In 1956 the antimetabolite methotrexate became the first drug to cure a solid tumour, and the following year 5-fluorouracil was introduced as the first of a new class of tumour-fighting compounds known as pyrimidine analogs. Since then many anticancer drugs have been developed and used with much success.