United Hospital Oncology team introduces chronomodulated chemotherapy

United Hospital Oncology team has successfully completed a chronomodulated chemotherapy for the first time in the country.

A patient with advanced colon cancer has taken the chronomodulated chemotherapy course and has been discharged with an uneventful hospital stay, reads a press release.

Consultant Oncology of United Hospital Dr Ashim Kumar Sen Gupta said, “This special type of time-controlled chemotherapy administration improves treatment tolerance and can also 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,” he added.

“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,” he further said.

Chronomodulated chemotherapy means “time-controlled chemotherapy”. There are few specific ‘clock related’ genes in our brainstems that control our time-dependent biological functions including sleeping and eating patterns, heart rate, body temperature etc, the press release says.

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. This is also beneficial for healthy cells which are at rest as they are then least sensitive to toxicity from chemotherapy.