Final answer:
Chemotherapy agents primarily trigger cell death by disrupting cell division, often causing side effects due to damage to rapidly dividing healthy cells.
Step-by-step explanation:
Chemotherapy agents work by interfering with the process of cell division, leading primarily to cell death. These drugs target rapidly dividing cells, a characteristic of many forms of cancer, where normal controls of cell proliferation have failed. This rapid division may lead to the development of tumors, which chemotherapy aims to combat by disrupting the replication of cancer cells. Common chemotherapy drugs, such as vincristine and colchicine's, disrupt mitosis by binding to tubulin and interfering with microtubule assembly, which is essential for cell division.
However, since chemotherapy drugs affect all rapidly dividing cells, they also harm healthy tissues with high cell turnover rates, such as hair follicles, the digestive system lining, and bone marrow. This unintended consequence results in the common side effects associated with chemotherapy. Over time, some cancer cells may develop resistance to chemotherapy drugs, thereby necessitating the use of combination chemotherapy, where several drugs are administered together to improve treatment efficacy and reduce the chance of resistance.