Vincristines

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A type of chemotherapy drug derived from the Madagascar periwinkle, used to treat certain types of cancer, particularly leukemia
2. An alkaloid extracted from Vinca rosea that interferes with cancer cell division, playing a crucial role in treating malignancies
3. A medical compound utilized in oncology that inhibits mitosis by targeting microtubules, commonly employed in cancer therapies

Etymology: The word is a plural, so it is the plural of "vincristine," a drug name built from pieces of two classical and modern sources. The first element, "vin-," is short for "vinca alkaloid," the group of compounds originally isolated from the periwinkle plant, whose genus name is "Vinca." The middle element comes from Latin "crista," meaning a tuft or crest, here referring to the crest-like tuft of leaves on plants, and the ending "-ine" is the common English suffix used in chemical names for alkaloids and related substances. Because the word is a coinage built from these parts rather than an older English term, its meaning rests entirely on its chemistry: the parts name the plant source and the chemical family, and the plural form simply refers to more than one such drug or compound.

Synonyms: vincristine