Why is cancer so hard to cure? Will we ever find an infallible cure?
In: 2088
Cancer isn’t one disease.
It’s a group of diseases with the same root cause – namely a mutation in a gene regulating cell division resulting in loss of control of cell division (and technically a mutation in the tumour suppression or immune signalling classes of gene).
Most cells divide in a controlled way depending on available resource, signalling, and other factors.
Tumours are caused by unregulated, rapid cell division.
The body does have genes for identifying and destroying cells with these mutations – tumour suppressor genes, suicide genes, expression of MHC molecules. However, in cancers which progress to the point they’re detectable – the cancerous cells also have a mutation which hides them from the immune system, or at least circumvents these self regulation mechanisms.
Curing cancer is difficult – breast cancer alone is >34 different cancers which all respond differently to different treatments. This is starting to be utilised with chemotherapies by genotyping (looking at the specific mutations causing a cancer) the cancer and using available data to provide the most effective chemotherapies for that specific mutation combination.
Also treating solid tumours – like synovial sarcoma, bowel cancers, ovarian cancers – and diffuse cancers like lymphoma require very different treatments.
I work in a company working on biologic therapies to treat cancers and the fact that our product only treats certain cancers, while my previous company’s products treat entirely different cancers, further complicates treatment.
Latest Answers