United Hospital Oncology Team Successfully Completes Chronomodulated Chemotherapy First Time in Bangladesh

A patient with advanced colon cancer has taken chronomodulated chemotherapy course, which is for the first time in Bangladesh and has been discharged with an uneventful hospital stay.

Chronomodulated chemotherapy is "time controlled chemotherapy". There are few specific 'clock related' genes in our brainstems that control our time-dependent biological functions including sleeping & eating patterns, heart rate, body temperature etc. Similarly, cancer cells also divide and rest at different times of any given day. In chronomodulated chemotherapy, the chemotherapy drugs are administered at the specific time when cancer cells divide making the cells more vulnerable to cell death; also this is beneficial for healthy cells which are at rest as they are then least sensitive to toxicity from chemotherapy.

Dr. Ashim Kumar Sen Gupta, Consultant Oncology of United Hospital said, this special type time controlled chemotherapy administration improves treatment tolerance, and also can improve treatment response and survival. This can be given to patients who previously needed to discontinue a chemotherapy protocol – either because it was ineffective or it was too debilitating for the patient to tolerate. In metastatic colon cancer or in advanced metastatic ovarian cancer, studies show that administering chemotherapy at the optimal time, can halve toxicity and double treatment response.