• Question: do you think that cancer will ever be cured?

    Asked by Kate Gibson to Kylie, Matt, Bex, RobB, Sam on 12 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by LilySiobhanReigate1709, Big man.
    • Photo: Sam Briggs

      Sam Briggs answered on 12 Jun 2016:

      Hi Kate Gibson,

      Not my field at all – but I don’t think so. By its very nature it is an inherent part of aging, in fact, we all have cancerous cells in our bodies all the time, our immune systems are just good at hunting them down and making sure they don’t run rampant. It’s do with the genes becoming distorted and losing the function to switch off their replicator switch. But cells can become damaged by doing anything, eating breathing, standing in the sun, so really I can’t see any way that we will cure it.

      I think we will become much better at treating it and understanding factors that put us more at risk and then we’ll be able to avoid it more easily!

      Hope that helps?

    • Photo: Kylie Belchamber

      Kylie Belchamber answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Hi Kate,
      I think we will get pretty close, and one day it might not be so scary as it is now. There is a lot of new research on immunotherapy, which is training the immune system to fight the cancer itself! You can do two things:
      1. Give a drug that boosts the immune system to fight off the cancer
      2. Take stem cells from the patient, train them to fight the cancer, and give them back so they can destroy it!

      This research is still in the early stages, but if it works, it could mean that we can cure some types of cancer in the future. So one day, i hope the answer is yes!

    • Photo: Matt Dunn

      Matt Dunn answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Hi Kate,

      Cancer itself is a very big thing, any cell that grows out of control is technically a cancer. Some of them are easier to deal with than others, and if you catch a cancer early it can be cured.

      But curing all cancer as a whole? It is possible, once we know what genetic mutations cause a cell to grow out of control, we can simply switch off the genetic pressure and in theory, the cancer should stop. This takes such a long time simply because there are so many different kinds of cancer caused by so many different kinds of mutation, but yes, eventually I believe all cancer will be curable.

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