• Question: how close are we to creating a cure for cancer ?

    Asked by 237curm25 to Fiona on 2 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Fiona Macfarlane

      Fiona Macfarlane answered on 2 Mar 2018:

      This is a really good question.A lot of people think we are looking for one cure for all cancer. There are over 200 types of cancer and they can all have different types within them too. Each person might have a different reaction to the treatments as well. So we need to find a way to make the treatments more personal to work on each different person. That is why using the immune system to treat cancer is a popular idea as we can make it personal to the person.

      On top of this cancer can change its behaviour to overcome treatments, so something that might have killed cancer cells in the past might not kill them anymore. So there will probably never be one cure for all cancers, but hopefully we can reduce the number of people who die from it and make it a more manageable disease.

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