2. Cancer
a. Some chemotherapy drugs used to treat cancer work by blocking the formation of microtubules. Why would this reduce the growth of cancer cells? Explain your answer.
b. Based on what you know about how these drugs work, explain why it also affects cells in hair follicles, the lining of our digestive system, and our immune system (side effects of these drugs).
Question
a. The microtubules are involved in the spindle assembly during mitosis that occurs in somatic cells. Therefore these microtubules play an important role in mitosis which is the process of increasing the number of cells. On the other hand, cancer is the condition due to uncontrolled growth of cells. So, if we can inhibit the microtubules, the mitotic cell division will not take place and cell division could be controlled and inhibit the formation of cancer.
b. As the hair follicle, digestive system lining, immune cells are one of the cells that show maximum number of cell division by mitosis. Therefore if blocking microtubules will block mitosis, it will also block the cell division in these cells too.
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