How close are we to a cure for cancer?

[Baz]

I was just watching the 1993 Jimmy Valvano ESPY's speech where he talked about donating to help find a cure.

So I was wondering if we are close to finding that cure.

I am not clued into this area of medicine at all so forgive me if this sounds like a naieve question.

Also - I realize our technology has vastly improved in ways to combat various forms of cancer, such as surgical procedures and pharmaceutical treatments.

Anyone have any input?

[Cajundaddy]

I seriously don't think modern medicine has a clue. All of the treatments including chemo, surgery, and various radiation therapies treat symptoms. Sometimes these treatments will be effective in halting cancer growth for 20 yrs but none really cure the disease.

I suspect prevention is still the best cure.

[Red88Carrera]

If you find a cure, you are out of a job, and all of the subsidies that go with it. There is really less incentive to find a cure then there is to not find a cure.

[widebody911]

Do you realize how many companies would suddenly go bust if someone actually found a cure for cancer? If you did magically find a cure, you might find yourself in a pair of cement shoes in short order. I wouldn't be surprised if more money was spent on "_______ for the cure" fundraising administrative expenses than any actual research.

[Moses]

Originally Posted by Cajundaddy

All of the treatments including chemo, surgery, and various radiation therapies treat symptoms. Symptoms? WRONG

Sometimes these treatments will be effective in halting cancer growth for 20 yrs but none really cure the disease. WRONG. Actually, MOST cancers are curable, and in this country, cured. Often with surgery. And now we even have a vaccination that PREVENTS cervical cancer in women. Cervical cancer was the most common cause of cancer related death in women years ago.

Originally Posted by Red88Carrera

If you find a cure, you are out of a job, and all of the subsidies that go with it. There is really less incentive to find a cure then there is to not find a cure.You really need a tin foil hat. Stem cell research, bone marrow transplants, HPV vaccinations ALL cure or prevent cancer.

So much research being done and so much progress. Pick up a journal.

[RWebb]

Besides the above, you have ask what cancer is.

There are many cancers, in many different parts of the body. They all share this: genetics have gone wrong - regulatory genes are out of control.

There will never be "a" cure for cancer. There are now, and will be many more, cures.

[Red88Carrera]

Originally Posted by Moses

So much research being done and so much progress. Pick up a journal.

Are you kidding me? Of course there has been progress. If there was no progress, they couldn't keep moving the carrot out further. That's how the machine feeds itself. Either they don't want to find a cure, or there are some really inept researchers working on it. How long has this research been going on? The only ones that really want to find a cure are the ones that have a horse in the race. It's just like the United Way or any other "just cause", it started out with good intent, but has degraded into a bunch of self-serving, greedy hypocrites.

[afterburn 549]

A cure starts at the farm,
i know it, they know it, you should know it.
They do not want to cure cancer, they want to treat it.
simple.

[Red88Carrera]

Originally Posted by afterburn 549

They do not want to cure cancer, they want to treat it.
simple.

Absolutely! It is much more lucrative to treat it than cure it.

[RWebb]

I would also tell you knuckleheads to pick up a journal, but I already know you couldn't understand even a textbook.

[Red88Carrera]

Saying "We are close/closer to a cure" assumes that you know what the cure is.
Sure we have more treatments, but how do we know if we are closer to a cure?

[Cajundaddy]

Originally Posted by Moses

So much research being done and so much progress. Pick up a journal.

Well, I guess before we all start reading Med journals we should clarify a few definitions first:

"Preventive medicine or preventive care consists of measures taken to prevent diseases,[1] (or injuries) rather than curing them or treating their symptoms. This contrasts in method with curative and palliative medicine, and in scope with public health methods (which work at the level of population health rather than individual health)."


cancer- Cancer Biology: Definition of Cancer

I am aware of the various vaccines available as both preventative care and treatment of active cancer disease. As disease prevention for some types? Yes. As effective treatment to halt growth or symptoms in some types? Yes. However I hesitate to classify these as a cure for the disease. Difference in semantics? Maybe. Carry on...

[targa911S]

They cured polio and they lost a pile of money because of it. Big pharm won't make that mistake again. It's all about "health maintenance" now. There is a lot more money in that.

[jyl]

One exciting area of cancer research today is immunotherapy. Researchers are increasingly figuring out what makes cancer cells into cancer cells. Normal cells are genetically programmed to replicate at a certain rate and then to die; with cancer cells, this programming goes wrong. Normal cells are vulnerable to the body's immune system; cancer cells have defenses that deflect the attention of immune cells or block their action.

For decades, researchers tried a vaccine approach, meaning they sensitized the patient's immune system against the type of cancer involved. This has not worked too well, as the immune system attacked the cancer but wasn't able to kill it. Approaches that involved boosting the immune systems also have issues, because an overactive immune system itself causes serious diseases. Currently there are attempts to block the cancer cells' defense against the immune system, and these seem promising. One of these new immunotherapy drugs is on the market (for melanoma) and s few others are close.

There isn't going to be a single "cure" for cancer because there are so many types and subtypes of cancer, e.g. there are dozen types of breast cancer, in each one the cancer cells use a different method to defeat the immune system and medical treatments, and cancer cells mutate in the patient so that a treatment may initially work but then stop working, and a pt may ultimately have a mix of different cancers.

Much progress has been made even so, in some cancers more than in others. For example, there is a blood cancer called chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), and it used to be that once you got it, on average you might live a year or so, only about 10% of its were alive 8 years later. A drug called Gleevec was developed 10 years ago, that extended average survival to over a decade, about 80-90% of pts now live over 8 years and the typical CML pt has a good chance of dying of old age. Gleevec: the Breakthrough in Cancer Treatment | Learn Science at Scitable

Breast cancer is another example, in the 1950s the typical woman would only live a couple of years after diagnosis, today many pts are effectively cured and many others live a long time. Ten year survival rate (what pct of women live ten years post-diagnosis) has gone from about 20% to over 70%. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/729858

As for the economic incentive to develop better treatments, there are enormous rewards. Gleevec sells something like $4-5 billion/yr and has brought over $30 billion dollars to the pharma company that developed it. It costs about $70K/year to be on Gleevec, but not for much longer, as the drug is going generic soon.

Suppose a company develops a one-time "cure" for a particular cancer that is otherwise a rapid death sentence - instead of taking a drug for years, you get one course of treatment and then go on to live a normal life - what would the economics of that be? Pretty powerful. The cost of that treatment would be huge and probably charged on a sliding scale - far more for a young person, less for an elderly person, scaled to the decades of life that the treatment would save. After all, there are already drugs that cost $250K/yr today. I think we'd see the first million-dollar drug.

One aspect of economic incentives that is not working well is early detection. Cancers are easier to treat and the pt's chances of survival are much better if the cancer is found early, but no-one gets hundreds of thousands of dollars' financial reward for finding a pt's cancer early. Similarly, diagnostic screening tests are not big business, the companies developing them don't make much money.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by RWebb

Besides the above, you have ask what cancer is.

There are many cancers, in many different parts of the body. They all share this: genetics have gone wrong - regulatory genes are out of control.

There will never be "a" cure for cancer. There are now, and will be many more, cures.

This. My wife is about to get her Masters (had been in a PhD program for the same study previously) and has taken many courses on genetics, micro-biology, etc..... Many of the things discussed in many of her classes have been about cancer. She did a project/paper/presentation on the BRCA gene about a month before Angelina Jolie made her big announcement.

Cancer isn't A disease. It's a whole family of diseases. (disease, may not be the best term, but you understand). There's never going to be one cure that covers all cancer. If it were ever eradicated, it would have to be because there were lots and lots of cures. (Honestly, I don't ever expect it to be eradicated)

[jhstealth]

This was a development that I was fascinated by. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nslinX6C1ZM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DnslinX6C1ZM

[masraum]

Originally Posted by jyl

It costs about $70K/year to be on Gleevec, but not for much longer, as the drug is going generic soon.

Suppose a company develops a one-time "cure" for a particular cancer that is otherwise a rapid death sentence - instead of taking a drug for years, you get one course of treatment and then go on to live a normal life - what would the economics of that be? Pretty powerful. The cost of that treatment would be huge and probably charged on a sliding scale - far more for a young person, less for an elderly person, scaled to the decades of life that the treatment would save. After all, there are already drugs that cost $250K/yr today. I think we'd see the first million-dollar drug.

Good grief, who the hell can afford to be on those drugs besides the 1%? I understand, but wow.

[jyl]

Having health insurance is pretty vital.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by jyl

Having health insurance is pretty vital.

I would think that you would need good health insurance.

[jyl]

Yup.

Those prices are offensive, but it costs $100MM to develop a Gleevec and for every drug that becomes a multi billion-dollar annual seller, 100 other drugs are only mildly successful sellers, and many 100's more fail during development. So the argument is that without the high prices, fewer new drugs will be developed.

Of course, drugs eventually go generic and then become inexpensive, helpful if you've lived long enough.