• Question: Why do some cancers regress spontaneously?

    Asked by Rachel on 22 Jun 2023.
    • Photo: Tammy Piper

      Tammy Piper answered on 22 Jun 2023:

      There is an area of research looking at the immune cells in the tumour micro environment TME (i.e the area in and around the tumour cells). If there are a lot of immune cells present, the TME is said to be hot and in some cancers, the activation of the immune cells is thought to help the body fight the tumour.

    • Photo: Kathleen Duffin

      Kathleen Duffin answered on 3 Jul 2023:

      This is such an interesting question! Unfortunately I can’t give you a simple answer, because we’re not entirely sure. It is a very rare thing to happen and it’s often associated with an infection happening at the same time. So it’s like that the immune cells (which help the body fight infection) are involved in fighting the tumour.

      There are also some specific types of cancer that we know are able to regress without treatment. For example, there is a cancer that more commonly occurs in childhood called neuroblastoma. Depending on the age of the patient and stage of their cancer, this can be a serious cancer that requires lots of treatment and can make the child very, very unwell. However, there is a type of neuroblastoma that occurs in young babies; it doesn’t spread far, doesn’t make them unwell, and can get better without treatment. Of course these babies are still monitored very closely by paediatric oncologists (cancer doctors) so that they can receive treatment if they need it. We are starting to understand more about the genetics associated with neuroblastoma tumours that are more likely to regress, but this is still an area where we have a lot to learn.

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