• Question: Can you cure cancer

    Asked by crew487tam on 9 Jun 2023.
    • Photo: Kamilla Bigos

      Kamilla Bigos answered on 9 Jun 2023:

      Being able to cure cancer entirely depends on the stage that a patient is diagnosed. If we catch the cancer early enough then patients can live cancer free. Research scientists are working together to try and find ways to treat patients who don’t respond well to currently available treatments.

    • Photo: Zahra Rattray

      Zahra Rattray answered on 9 Jun 2023:

      It pretty much depends on the type of cancer and when the patient is diagnosed. For example, for some types of breast cancer, if they are picked up early they can be treated with surgery. Whereas, there are more aggressive types of cancers such as brain tumours (glioblastoma), that might not respond to chemotherapy at all.

    • Photo: Federica Spaggiari

      Federica Spaggiari answered on 9 Jun 2023:

      There are many different types of cancer, for some of them there are really effective treatments and patients have high chances to recover, other are really thought to treat and there are not effective treatments yet – but we are working on it!

    • Photo: Kehinde Ross

      Kehinde Ross answered on 11 Jun 2023:

      You can think about trying to cure cancer like trying to get rid of weeds in a garden. If there are only a few weeds you could pull them out (a bit like surgically removing cancer cell) or kill then with weedkiller (a bit like using chemotherapy to kill cancer cells). But there are already lots of weeds, it will be hard to get rid of all of them – just as if the cancer has is already spread, it will be hard to kill all the cancer cells. Also, most of the weeds might be killed but the roots are sometimes still there – and after a while they grow back! Likewise, most cancer cells might be removed (the patient will be in “remission”) but hard-to-kill cancer stem cells sometimes linger – and eventually form new cancers that are resistant to chemotherapy. At which point it becomes very hard to “cure” the disease.

    • Photo: Jean Ling Tan

      Jean Ling Tan answered on 11 Jun 2023: last edited 11 Jun 2023 8:59 pm

      There isn’t a single cure to cancer because the word “cancer” itself represents hundreds of different diseases. That being said, the treatment for many cancers have improved because of the research being done by scientists across the world and this means patients have more treatment options. Each cancer is very different – like the other scientists have mentioned in their answers, being able to cure cancer is dependent on how early the patient is diagnosed and the type of cancer that patient has.

    • Photo: Kathleen Duffin

      Kathleen Duffin answered on 12 Jun 2023:

      The short answer is that at the moment sometimes we can and sometimes we can’t!

      A longer answer is that there are many, many different types of cancer so there is not just one cure that will treat every single cancer. I’m a paediatrician, which means I look after children. In this country, over 8 out of 10 children who are diagnosed with cancer will be cured. But sometimes the cancer has spread very far, or is very aggressive, or it isn’t as sensitive to treatment (meaning that medications that would kill a different cancer don’t seem to get rid of it). And many of these treatments have nasty side effects, which can also make the patients very poorly.

      So very sadly, we cannot yet cure every child with cancer. But we are trying to develop and improve our ability to pick up cancer early and to treat it safely and effectively, to cure as many children as possible.

    • Photo: Mungo Harvey

      Mungo Harvey answered on 12 Jun 2023:

      Cancer itself is incredibly diverse so there isn’t exactly “one cure for cancer”.
      It can depend on the location, stage (how far it has progressed) and personal circumstances to name a couple of factors.
      There are many examples of cancer treatment which has come a long way and an amazing number of people can survive and lead a very happy life.
      Unfortunately there are some cases where we haven’t got as many treatment options as we would like and it can be much harder to treat; there is plenty of fantastic research going on and the field is always progressing so I expect this answer will keep changing too.

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