Chapter 21. New Chapter Title

21.1 Section Title

1Cancer afflicts over a million Americans every year and proves fatal to nearly half of those afflicted. (1) [[Reference: 1. Bethesda (MD): National Cancer Institute; 2013 [accessed 2014 Jan 9] http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html]]

2Additionally, chemotherapy causes a vast array of harmful side effects, including immunosuppression, fatigue and nausea, neurological disorders, and organ damage (2) which, even if the cancer is contained, may negatively affect the patient’s quality of life. [[Reference: 2. Stanford Medicine Cancer Institute. Chemotherapy drugs and side effects. Stanford (CA): Stanford Medicine; 2014 [accessed 2014 Jan 21]. http://cancer.stanford.edu/information/cancerTreatment/methods/chemotherapy.html.]]

3Despite these harmful side effects, chemotherapeutic drugs would be a viable option if they were effective at completely removing cancer from the body—which the 1197 discovery of cancer stem cells (3) proved was not the case. [[Reference: 3. Bonnet D, Dick JE. Human Acute Myeloid Leukemia Is Organized as a Hierarchy That Originates from a Primitive Hematopoietic Cell. Nature Med. 1997;3(7):730–737.]]

4Fortunately, scientists are working on other viable treatment options, ones that target the “hallmarks of cancer,” (4) or the requirements necessary for the successful development of the disease. [[Reference: 4. Hanahan D, Weinberg RA. Hallmarks of cancer: the next generation. Cell. 2011;144(5):646–674.]]

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