• Question: have u found a cure for cancer?

    Asked by cherry1 to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 10 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by cupcake94, lolypop, coralmorgan, pow3rdrivetom, laurenbrammer1407, wrightm11, kapoof, fletcher98, smithc99, annafrancis893, , mariam236, icecream19, naruto, , , , manofsteel, .
    • Photo: Matthew Lam

      Matthew Lam answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      The simple answer is no. The word ‘cure’ is not the best way to describe where research is currently going for cancer. We can’t cure the disease in the way you can cure yourself of a disease like malaria but we aim to develop treatments that are so good that if you got cancer you would have no worries that it could kill you. So we really think about it as ‘stopping people dying from cancer’.

      The best way to do this would be to prevent people getting cancer in the first place. To do this we need to know a lot about what the causes of cancer are, including genetic, lifestyle and environmental causes. When we know more about this we will be able to design drugs that can prevent people from getting cancer.

      We also want to have the best treatments available for people that do get cancer. Because there are many different types of cancer we need drugs that work against every single type so that no matter what type of cancer you have it can be treated.

    • Photo: Anastasia Wass

      Anastasia Wass answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      Unfortunately we’re never going to be able to cure cancer as it will always just evolve resistance to our treatments. However we can work on preventing cancer and making the treatments so effective that no-one dies!

    • Photo: Andrea Hanvey

      Andrea Hanvey answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      A cure for cancer is not possible because not all cancers are the same. The best research can do is find more effective treatments, and treatments that are specific to tumour cells. It is also better to catch cancer early so that patients can be treated and have a much lower chance of the cancer returning. This is why screening programs such as cervical screening, bowel and breast screening are important.

    • Photo: Amar Joshi

      Amar Joshi answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      Cancer is one word which covers many very different diseases. While we are getting better at spotting and treating the cancers there no cure, just hope of remission (long term absense of disease). Hopefully as we understand cancers better we will be able to have treatments which are better and may seem like ‘cures’ for particular cancers. But in the meantime, preventing disease progression and paitent death are the goals.

    • Photo: Leah Fitzsimmons

      Leah Fitzsimmons answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      In my research project I look at which genes lymphoma (a type of white blood cell cancer) cells rely on to stay alive. The genes I am interested in can be disabled using newly developed drugs. These drugs don’t kill healthy cells as they have back up mechanisms to stop them becoming reliant on a small number of survival genes. It is hoped that these new drugs can be used in combination with old drugs so that more cancer cells are killed more quickly and with fewer side effects.

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