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Asked by Keelin C to Remsha on 5 Nov 2018.
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Remsha Afzal answered on 5 Nov 2018: last edited 5 Nov 2018 6:17 pm
We are at a stage where cancer research is a big priority to many scientists and drug companies. Recently, a Nobel prize was awarded to a team who discovered a way where you can use your immune cells to fight cancer, called cancer immunotherapy. That’s just one of the several different cool ways scientists are trying to treat cancer
However, cancer comes in many different forms or types and that makes it very difficult to say exactly if one single approach will work for all cancer types. So its important that we continue researching on it and I believe everyday we come closer to improve our odds to fight against it! I am fairly optimistic about the future 🙂
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Comments
Triona commented on :
Nowadays, there are many treatments for different cancers. If you can find what causes something, you can very often work out how to cure it. With cancer, there are many contributing causes rather than a single cause. However, the battle to help people survive is being won. Now many people survive – are cured. There is a really good article in the Magazine ‘How it Works’ where they go in to detail on different cures for cancers if you would like to read some more.
Lisa commented on :
I don’t believe there will ever be one ‘cure’ for cancer. Each cancer is so different; lung cancer is very different to brain cancer….. stomach cancer is very different skin cancer….. and so on. To make this even more complicated, each patient is very different. For example, two women with breast cancer can be treated with completely different drugs.
On a very positive note, we are making great advancements in the treatment and management of cancer. Free cancer screening available to adults in Ireland means we are catching cancer a lot earlier, before it has spread to other parts of the body. In many cases, cancer caught at an early stage is extremely curable!! I think it is important we are all educated on the early signs of cancer.
While I don’t think there will ever be one ‘golden drug’, scientists are developing many different types of effective drugs for different types of cancer. We are able to treat cancer better today than ever before!
Oliver commented on :
New developments in gene-editing are also adding to the mission for curing cancer (or perhaps it would be better to say cancers, as noted by my colleagues, there are many varieties). CRISPR-Cas9 is a development of a bacterial immune system that can be reprogrammed to seek out and destroy (by cutting out and even replacing) abnormal DNA in humans (and other species) that can produce many health problems, including cancer. For a very interesting TED talk by one of the key scientists in this area (a pioneer in CRISPR gene editing technology), see here: https://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_doudna_we_can_now_edit_our_dna_but_let_s_do_it_wisely?language=en
The main optimistic point is that this new technology and method of gene editing (gene therapy/engineering) enables research to be done much faster, more efficiently and less expensively than before. It is quite revolutionary. However, like all scientific pursuits, it will still take time to develop the CRISPR method better, to be safer and more efficient, and to target the right genes and to make the right cuts and insertions where necessary. There are also many developmental pathways to cancer that are much more complex to understand than just a case of cutting out certain genes (itself a large task ahead!). For more information, please see: https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2018/01/12/how-can-crispr-genome-editing-shape-the-future-of-cancer-research/