Where’s The Damn Cancer Cure?

Every couple of weeks, another news story breaks a promising new drug for cancer. So why haven’t we cured cancer after all these years?

Cancer is not one disease. It’s hundreds of diseases.

In 2021, 1,898,160 new cancer cases and 608,570 cancer deaths are projected to occur in the United States. The word “cancer” actually refers to a multitude of about 100 different diseases, with wide-ranging and varied characteristics, risk factors, and causes that call for extensive and unique treatments.

What’s wrong with cancer cells?

Cancer cells behave differently compared to normal cells in the body. These differences usually occur during the process of cell division.

Normal cells can….

1. Reproduce when and where it’s needed.
2. Stick together in the right place of the body.
3. Self destruct when the cell becomes damaged or too old.
4. Become specialized and have a specific role to perform.

Cancer cells….

1. Don’t stop growing and dividing when enough cells are generated, forming tumors made up of billions of cancerous cells.
2. Ignore chemical signals from other cells.
3. Don’t stick together, easily breaking away from its neighbors and spreading to other parts of the body.
4. Don’t carry on the process of maturing and are unable to complete their function in the body.
5. Don’t repair themselves or die, meaning they avoid undergoing apoptosis and can continue to grow rapidly and spread.
6. Are abnormal and have different sizes, shapes, and genetic makeup.

Normal Cell vs Cancer Cell

Early Detection Using Machine Learning

The first step in defeating the cancer epidemic, a leading cause of death worldwide, is early detection. Cancer cannot be treated without understanding what the pathology is. Pathologists examine tissue slides containing a vast amount of data when diagnosing cancer. This process is very difficult and time consuming.

Those at Google AI realized they can bring augmented reality into their existing microscopes to detect cancers in real time, enabling all pathologists to gain access to machine learning. As information is being fed into a computer, billions of calculations are being computed to detect tumors. It is currently detecting breast and prostate cancer, but researchers can use this groundbreaking technology on any other cancer type they train models for.

Their mission is to increase the accuracy and availability of cancer diagnosis and save people’s lives.

Google AI claims 99% accuracy in metastatic breast cancer detection

Finally, A Cure to Cancer?

Experimental no longer……. Immunotherapy

Unlike radiation and chemotherapy, which work by targeting and killing cancer cells, immunotherapy works differently. In immunotherapy, the target is activating the patient’s own immune system to fight the cancer. Although every cancer cell is different, as described above, they all have one thing in common: Cells divide out of control and hide from the immune system. Immunotherapy aims to boost the immune system’s response by helping it recognize and attack the cancer cells. However, there is the risk of the immune system attacking its own healthy cells.

One such immunotherapy is CAR-T, which is being used to fight certain blood cancers. After removing a patient’s immune cells, scientists can genetically engineer or retrain them to seek out cancer cells. The problem is some tumors are being penetrated by the immune cells, but there simply are not enough of those cells.

Gene Therapy is another potential cure.

Gene therapy is the alteration of genes within to body to fight diseases, including cancer. Currently, there are a few ways to use gene therapy in the battle against cancer:

1. Remove the mutated genetic material and replace it with healthy material. Like replacing a flat tire.
2. Insert special genes into white blood cells, which gives them a “chance” to detect and fight tumors.
3. Reactivating the self destruction button inside the cancer cell.

So how does it work?

Scientist remove the DNA from a virus, and insert a treatment gene instead. The virus makes its way into a cell, so when replication occurs the “good gene” is copied rather than the mutated one.

I’ll end with a question to keep in mind. If we are able to use gene therapy to cure and combat diseases and conditions does that drastically alter our lifespan and in turn does that drastically alter the world population?