• Question: is there a cheaper way of curing cancer?if not is it possible there will be?

    Asked by katelyn to Sinead on 13 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Sinead Loughran

      Sinead Loughran answered on 13 Nov 2016:

      Making good cancer therapies is a costly pursuit. It takes many years and millions of euros/dollars to turn an idea into a medicine.
      There ‘s a new radio add made by one of the major pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer, and it provides good insight into what it takes to make a ‘biopharmaceutical’ drug.
      you can see the american version of this add here
      https://www.ispot.tv/ad/AS79/pfizer-inc-before-it-became-a-medicine

      The original chemotherapy drugs used in cancer treatment were chemical drugs (many are still in use) and would be much cheaper to produce than the newer biopharmaceutical drugs.

      I think in the future cancer will be diagnosed much earlier and require less treatment with more targeted therapies (targeted treatment seeks and destroys only the cancer cell).

      Nanotechnology also has the potential to generate entirely novel and highly effective therapeutic agents. These agents may be less costly to produce than the biopharmaceutical drugs above.

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