Why is curing cancer so difficult

Thus, cancer cells a given individual may have today may differ from the ones that appear several months later. Even though we do have the proper analytical and modern sequencing methodolgies to track and predict these changes before they happen, it is much more difficult to hit a moving target than a stationary one.

Even the use of a combination of effective cancer treatments can result in cancer cells resistant to cure if they have survived the initial treatment. For instance, a drug that inhibits the expression of the gene BCL2L1 in gastric cancer cells, allowing them to undergo apoptosis or cellular death, may not work for other types of cancer. Even if we attempt to stop cancer cells from occurring in the first place, it is simply implausible as these cancerous cells are caused and influenced by many factors such as our lifestyle-related factors of alcohol and UV radiation from the sunlight and biological factors such as gender and skin type.

These cancer cells are hard to target even for our own immune system. They evade and hide from our own bodies since these cancer cells originate from our existing tissue. Therefore, our body has a very difficult time differentiating these cancer cells from normally dividing cells. In some cases, our T cells, or immune cells that are responsible for finding and destroying pathogens, are able to infiltrate tumors, but they suddenly stop their attack due combinatorial cell signaling and suppression of the immune response due to T regulatory cells.

There has even been additional research that has shown that there may even be a special chemical in cancer cell DNA that inactivates the expression of certain genes, which allow them to avoid being detected by our immune system.

Between , all cancer survival rates have increased from While there will likely be no universal cancer cure, scientists have systematically attacked nearly every type of cancer, and treatments for each will likely be increasingly effective as time goes on. Martin, Laura J. Roser, Max, and Hannah Ritchie. Wanner, Mark. Davis, Charles Patrick. Why tumors make people so sick in the first place is not well understood.

But overall, it remains a mystery, Golub says. Attempting to cure any individual person of cancer is a lot like trying to cure someone of a bacteria infection. All you have to do is kill all the bad cells, and not destroy too many healthy cells in the process. Chemotherapy attempts to do this by targeting all cells that are growing fast in the body , which gets the cancer cells, but some healthy cells, too.

I can guarantee it. In a bacteria infection, the surviving bacteria are often ones with resistance to the antibiotic used — survival of the fittest at work. As these survivors replicate and proliferate, the disease returns, but now the infection is resistant to the original drugs. The same thing can happen in cancer, since the cancer cells are prone to racking up new mutations as they replicate.

By the time most patients are diagnosed with cancer, there can be upwards of 10 billion cancer cells already in the body, Golub explains. In gastric cancer, which currently has a poor prognosis, revealed that a significant percentage of patient tumors had additional copies of a gene, BCL2L1, that prevents cells from self-destructing.

Thus, even in conditions that would normally initiate the self-destruct process, a cell will continue to grow and divide and be very susceptible to turning cancerous. Lee also found that a drug that inhibits BCL2L1 functions in cancer cells.

It allowed the self-destruct process to reactivate, leading to cell death, making it a promising new therapeutic target for gastric cancer. Cancer cells, although different in many ways from other cells in the body, are known to evade our immune system or suppress key elements of the usual immune response. In some cases aggressive cytotoxic killer T cells — the immune cells that locate and kill invading pathogens — actually infiltrate tumors.

For some reason, however, they soon halt their attack through a combination of cell-to-cell signaling and an influx of T regulator cells, a different type of immune cells that suppress the immune response. Other research found that a chemical compound is sometimes added to cancer cell DNA and suppresses the activity of certain genes, making the cells much less likely to be targeted by the immune system. By controlling the activity of these genes, cancer is able to hide in plain sight within the body and avoid an immune response.

The excitement is merited, and there have been spectacular successes in human patients. Conducts research to understand how vaccines work and to define precisely the immune mechanisms that underlie vaccination, with a focus on cancer immunotherapies. Karolina Palucka, M. To do this, she is developing a special mouse system that provides an experimental model using both human tumor tissue and human immune cells.

She is also investigating how to increase response to a class of drugs — checkpoint inhibitors — that block immune cell inhibition and promote cancer cell destruction.

One method is to enhance the expansion or activation of killer T cells through cancer vaccines. Cancer remains a difficult disease to treat, but the emerging therapies are increasingly effective. As we approach a new decade, it is interesting to speculate what we will be able to do when we move into the s. What therapies will be available that seem out of reach today? While outright cures will likely remain elusive, we may be poised at the brink of an important step or even leap forward in our ability to treat cancer nonetheless.

The story of Kelsey Gallagher highlights the hope and the limitations of current therapies for cancer. The future of cancer treatment lies in more personalized, precise medicine, fueled by the latest scientific advances.

The Jackson Laboratory is using genomics and cancer avatars to identify, faster and with greater precision, which treatments will be effective in the individual patient. We use cookies to personalize our website and to analyze web traffic to improve the user experience. You may decline these cookies although certain areas of the site may not function without them.

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