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Asked by anon-253450 to James_the_Scientist, Faith, Ellie on 11 May 2020.
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Ellie Dunstone answered on 11 May 2020:
The issue with finding one “cure” for cancer is that each kind of cancer (breast, skin, colon etc) is quite different, and there are even subtypes within this that effectively means they are different diseases that need treating differently. There are actually already cancers that have very good success rates for cures (certain kinds of leukaemia, testicular cancer) – but the treatments used for these don’t necessarily work on all cancers. I think we have made a lot of progress and we will continue to find lots of good treatments for the different kinds of cancer, but I’m not sure if we will ever have one cure to fit all types.
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James Beswick answered on 11 May 2020:
A really important question – but it’s hard to say for definite. There has been a HUGE improvement in the understanding and treatment of various cancers over the past few years, and I expect this will continue in the future, but cancer is a very complicated disease. It is also important to remember that different cancers have different survival rates and different effects on people.
Comments
Sonia commented on :
As Ellie has said, cancer is not a disease but a group of diseases. We call cancer to any disease characterised by deregulated proliferation of cells, but the causes of this alteration can be completely different and so need to be the treatments. We have made huge improvements in the detection, characterisation and treatment of cancer. Not that long ago we only had chemotherapy, that is a nonspecific treatment to kill fast-growing cells. Now we can analyse the molecular characteristics of tumours and use specific drugs for them, that are more effective and have less side effects. However, we still have a long way to go because some tumours are very complex: some cancer cells have hundreds of different DNA alterations, making it difficult to know which alteration is the most important. Moreover, the cancer cells can become resistant and stop responding to the treatment we are using or they can migrate to other organs and extend the cancer, which is called “metastasise”. Researchers are optimistic and although some tumours, like pancreatic cancer, are still very difficult to treat, for others the survival rate is now around 90% and increasing.