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Asked by annawatsonx to John, Del, Catherine, Krishna, Mo Rassul on 10 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by metalhead, ollyscanlon, chloeeee, s12iteas, braindeadmetalhead, spudjev, flossboss88, hanakarim, , cr4zeezoologist1, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
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John Foster answered on 10 Mar 2014:
This is a very good, but difficult question. Firstly to say a cancer in a patient has been “cured” is very difficult, because for some cancers although treatment makes it go away for a very long time, it can sometimes come back – doctors call this a relapse. There are a number of cancers which can be cured quite often e.g. leukemia in children can be cured with powerful anti-cancer drugs called chemotherapy. Some cancers in adults including: testicular cancer, breast and skin cancer can also be cured. With most of these cancers the cure is surgery to cut out the part of the body that has become the cancer. The doctors often then give the patients drugs (chemotherapy) to prevent the cancer coming back.
The best way to try and cure these cancers is to prevent them, for example not smoking will dramatically reduce your risk of getting lung cancer or wearing sun screen to prevent your skin being damaged on hot days and leading to skin cancer. The next best thing is to catch the cancer early, which is why screening of people that are at risk is really important. The more we know about what the early stages of cancer look like, the better doctors are at noticing these signs and the quicker they can try to treat the patient. Lots of people are researching this area of biology to try and find tests for cancer, for example there is a standard test for prostate cancer that looks at proteins in the urine. However, there are many cancers which we still are very difficult to treat and cure, like lung cancer and brain tumours.
If you are interested personally, in how close “I” am, then the answer is very far! I have only begun my research career and I am working on the complex and interesting biology of what goes on inside lung cancer cells. I hope that with my current and future work, as well as the many many others working on this and other cancers, we will be able to find better treatments and improve the number of people that are cured!
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Muhammed Rassul answered on 10 Mar 2014:
If you talk to anyone doing cancer, they normally say we are 10 years or so away. I don’t really know, as cancer it not really one condition, but a collection of different conditions.
There is a lot of research into i currently, so I think maybe we will stuble upon something that works in part of the body. The problem with cancer in my point of view is identifying what is cancer. It is like trying to find a certain ball in a ball pit, they all feel and look the same/similar. -
Adelle Thrower answered on 10 Mar 2014:
With the current targeted therapies out there we are getting ever closer to treating cancer. In terms of curing- the best way would be prevention- there’s a lot now towards genetically profiling people to see if they may be a higher risk for cancer and research looking at possible prevention as well as cures. I think that rather than an outright cure, in the next ten years people will be able to live much longer having had cancer or be prevented – an example of this would be the HPV vaccination to prevent cervical cancer. One would assume in 10-20 years the incidence of this disease would be drastically reduced.
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