Cancer and Oncology Terms

A nurse whose specialty covers the whole arc of cancer care, from giving hazardous drugs safely to managing what they leave behind.

A licensed pharmacist with special training in how to design, give, monitor, and change chemotherapy for cancer patients.

An oncolysate is laboratory material made by breaking open cancer cells, releasing cellular components that can be studied or used to prompt an immune response.

Naming an outcome and not a method, the word covers anything that leaves cancer cells broken open, from a drug to a virus.

Treatment using an oncolytic virus (a virus that infects and breaks down cancer cells but not normal cells ).

Turning an infection into a treatment, where the burst tumor cell matters less than the alarm its debris raises.

Bursting the tumor cell is only half the mechanism; the wreckage left behind shows the immune system what it should be hunting.

A drug used to treat acute leukemia.

Surgery to remove part or all of an organ or a tumor and nearby lymph nodes.

A drug used to increase the number of blood cells, especially platelets, in some cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.

A substance being studied in the treatment of diarrhea caused by infection with Clostridium difficile (a type of bacteria that can grow without oxygen) in cancer patients.

A rare, slow-growing tumor that usually forms in the optic nerve, optic chiasm, or optic tract.

Oral cancer arises in the tissues of the mouth, most often as squamous cell carcinoma linked to tobacco and heavy alcohol use.

Cancer that forms in tissues of the oral cavity (the mouth).

Oropharyngeal cancer develops in the back of the throat, including the tonsils and base of tongue, with a growing share linked to HPV infection.

A drug used to treat certain types of non-small cell lung cancer.

A substance being studied in the treatment of cancer.

A cancer of the bone that usually affects the large bones of the arm or leg.

The tumor makes bone, which is what gives it away on an X-ray and what separates it from cancer that merely arrived in bone.

A condition in which cells that may become cancer form in the thin layer of tissue that covers an ovary (female reproductive gland in which eggs are made).