Final answer:
Cancer chemotherapeutic agents often produce detrimental side effects because they act on all rapidly dividing cells, not just cancerous ones, damaging healthy tissues in organs with high cell turnover. The physicochemical properties of these drugs can also contribute to toxicity and limit effective targeting of cancer cells, while combination chemotherapy increases exposure to potentially toxic compounds.
Step-by-step explanation:
The reason why some cancer chemotherapeutic agents, such as antimetabolites, have noxious side effects in certain organ systems is that these drugs non-selectively target all rapidly dividing cells, not just cancer cells. Since many vital organ systems, like the skin, hair follicles, gastrointestinal tract, and bone marrow, replenish themselves through frequent cell division, they are also adversely affected by chemotherapy. The chemotherapeutic drugs tend to interfere with cell division by mechanisms such as disruption of DNA duplication or chromosome separation, inadvertently impacting healthy tissues along with the cancerous ones.
Additionally, many of these anticancer drugs are hydrophobic and have poor solubility, which may lead to local toxicity when they do not adequately penetrate the aqueous environment around tumor cells. The physicochemical properties of these drugs make targeted delivery a challenge, with potential side effects occurring at various levels within the body, including organs, cell types, or specific biochemicals.
Furthermore, the therapeutic efficacy of these drugs is often compromised as cancer cells can develop resistance to specific drugs, necessitating the use of a combination of different drugs over varying lengths of time. This combination chemotherapy can enhance the chance of adverse effects due to the cumulative toxicity of the drugs employed.