• Question: do you think we'll find a cure for cancer anytime soon?

    Asked by to Ben, Dave, Ditte, Heather, Rebecca on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Rebecca Gladstone

      Rebecca Gladstone answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Cancer occurs when normal cell division gets out of control.
      There are lots of different types of cancer and different causes, some people have a genetic mutation that makes it more likely that cancer will occur. There are also viruses like HPV which can cause cancer, we now have a vaccine to prevent the initial infection and prevent this kind of cancer occuring. There are chemicals that can cause changes in cells that make them cancerous as well, preventing cancers by regulating the use of such chemicals and protecting ourselves with suncream from the sun helps us to stop cancers happening.
      As all the types of cancers are slightly different they will need different ways of treating them. This will be easier for some cancers than for others. The stage at which the cancer is detected is also really important for how easily we can treat it, which is why it is so important to go for screening when it is available, and talk to their doctor when they have unexplained symptoms!

    • Photo: Ben White

      Ben White answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      There are many many different kinds of cancers and reasons why the ours normal healthy cells mutate and become cancerous. Finding a cure for all cancer as a whole will likely take some time, but we will find cures.
      Aside from possible future technologies, e.g. gene therapy, we’ve already made good progress on curing people of many types of cancer with things like radiation treatment, chemotherapy, and various medicine.
      As Rebecca says above, there’s lots we can do already to help prevent these cancers from occurring- one third of all cancer caused by our life style choices.

    • Photo: Dave Baker

      Dave Baker answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      No not anytime soon but we’re making very small steps to improve the diagnosis and treatment of cancers. One day in the far future I see it possible.

    • Photo: Ditte Hedegaard

      Ditte Hedegaard answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      I agree with Ben and Rebecca , because cancer can develop from any type of cell in the body, humans can get many different types of cancers. Cancer Research UK estimates that there is more than 200 different types and all can of these can be divided into even more subtypes of cancer.

      I think it will be close to impossible to come up with one treatment that will cure all cancers and think it is more likely that we find different treatments for each type of cancer. Some scientists are currently looking into designing specific treatment to individual patient, also called personalised treatment or stratified treatment, which means that a specific type of treatment only will work on some patients and not on others even though they have the same type of cancer. I think we are going to see a lot more of this in the future.

      Some of the most successful cancer treatments today are radiation and chemotherapy. However these may cause massive damage to our bodies. Radiation can cause server burns and chemotherapy can be extremely toxic and some of the healthy cells may die from it. I think that the future challenge is to not only find cures for cancer, but also to find treatments that are better aimed at the cancer cells and less damaging to the healthy ones.

Comments