Despite the survival rates of many forms of cancer has increased over the past 50 years, are we closer to finding an actual "cure"?

We seem to be twice as likely to survive 10 years after a cancer diagnosis in 2016, compared to the 1970's. In the past 40 years, the drug treatment, radiotherapy and surgery were archaic compared to what we have now. Cancer Research UK believes progress is continuing, and that by 2034, 75% of people will survive cancer.

Some types of cancers are already curable. Testicular cancer is one of them. Mortality from this type of cancer in the UK has decreased by 82% since the 1970s. Chronic myeloid leukemia, treated with new drugs, has life expectancy go from 2-3 years, to a regular lifetime.

Some cancers, however, and still as deadly.

Pancreatic cancer, is the 10th most common cancer, and kills 9000 people each year in the UK alone. Survival rates are only 1%.

With over 200 different types of cancers, particular genes and proteins are found to combat specific cancers. A magic bullet of one to kill them all, seems to be a remote possibility...

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Cure?

A doctor considers someone cured from cancer after 5 years of being disease-free. That's one way of calculating the "battle" on cancer. If we want to remove it for life, that's a whole other battle to win. Keeping it at bay and sustaining a life may be a more realistic and possible goal, at least for now.

Improvements are going to come from multiple directions, not one single avenue. From prevention, to surgical and radiotherapy advancement, to new drug treatments.

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Prevention

Prevention is the #1 best prospect for beating cancer, by never getting it!

Half of the worlds cancers are preventable, and 90% of them have a likely environmental or lifestyle trigger. Some such environmental and lifestyle triggers are smoking, alcohol, meat, and other well known risk factors. Removing these vices from our lives would reduce cancer by an estimated 40% at least.

The mole rat, interestingly, prevents cancer from proliferating by secreting a sugary goo that protects their cells like a cage, preventing cancer cells from spreading.

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Catching Early

Early detection results in high success of elimination. When it spreads, that's where the bigger problem lies. Finding cancer at early stage, with screening methods, is crucial to help beat it.

Scientists at Swansea University are working on a finger-prick blood test that would allow them to spot any cancer up to 10 years before normal symptoms occur. Through studying patients with oesophagial cancer, they have been able to find a red blood mutation that shows up as a sign long before other signs of the disease.

Surgery and radiotherapy are better at "curing" cancer than simple drugs, because they cut out the cancer and prevent it from spreading more. Radiotherapy is successful because it breaks the DNA of the cancer and stops them from dividing. But this comes with serious side effects, such as impotence, heart problems, bowel infections and potentially a second cancer from the radiation.

New ratiotherapy techniques like proton beam therapy or stereotactic ablation are more specific to target only cancer cells, reducing the over all damage to our healthy bodies.

Arising

Cancer arises when the normal cell-division process goes wrong with the mutations forming with a damaged or copied genes. Normally these mutated damaged cells self-destruct. But, sometimes, the damage prevents self-destruction. The mutations continue and build up. Cells divide out of control and form lumps or tumors. Each reproduction, replication or division of a faulty cell increases the likelihood of more mutations and changing its genetic makeup. Small groups can break off and be carried out through the body, forming new metastase cancers where they land.

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Drugs

We can press a "pause" button on some cancers with some drugs. In 2012, it was discovered that cell do not mutate in a linear predictable fashion with all cells being identical. This is why they are hard to target unilaterally. One biopsy can show 25 different mutations, while different samples can show 118. Most modern drugs only target one mutation.

New treatments can combine drugs to target more mutations. In an evolutionary tree model of mutation, the targeting can be done on a common ancestor root trunk method, rather than trying to get at each mutation individually. Now people are talking about heterogeneity for why drug treatment fails, where in 2012 nobody was because they didn't understand how mutations acted this way.

Keep it alive

Cancer mutate and evolve quickly, making them resistant to drug treatments. Since the mutations that are weaker and are targeted by treatments die off, the resistant cells take over. Scientists are now looking to keep those weaker ones alive, and letting them out-compete the drug-resistant mutation. This way the mutation that remains can be more easily targeted.

Boost immunity

Immunotherapy, which is to stimulate the body's defense mechanisms, is a groundbreaking scientific advancement. This method of antibiotics or stimulating the defenses, have proven effective in treating lung and skin cancers. Some tumors disappeared.

A new technique in activating macrophage immune cells within the tumor, prevent it from being concealed from immunotherapy approaches.

There is also a new discovery of proteins "Flag" the earliest mutations as genetic faults that are imprinted on the cell. This allows a way for therapies to target all cancer cells from a common genetic flag they advertise.

Vaccines

The human body often ignored cancer cells because of how similar they are to regular cells.

A new technique of injecting cancer RNA in the body via nanoparticle capsules, allow the body's defense mechanism to detect it as a virus, and target the cancer cells int he body that match the RNA profile.

Another vaccine in development is to prevent a recurrence of a cancer someone has already had. A potent immune cell called a tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL), can be harvested from tumor cells that have been removed from the body. These cells can be reinjected so as to help the body prevent this cancer from recurring in the future.

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Modern Treatments

Rather than pumping a body full of drugs, more specific targetting methodologies are being developed.

Nanoparticles and Lasers

Danish researchers developed a method of using laser to heat up nanoparticles injected into tumors. This burns the cells from within. This does not damage healthy surrounding tissues, unlike existing chemo or raiotherapies.

Drugs can also be included in these targeted payloads.

Trojan-Horse Drug Delivery

When cancer spreads throughout the body, targeting becomes even more important so as to prevent chemotherapies that target the whole body. Sending in potent chemotherapy drugs directly on the cancer sites through engineered stem cells, is a covert Trojan-horse method of hitting them hard when it's too late for them to defend themselves.

Salmonella

Salmonella is not used to carry anti-cancer weapons. Salmonella bacteria has a tendency to find its way to tumors, invade them, and multiply. The bacteria has been modified so as to be harmless to patient, but still effective to carry cancer-killing methodologies directly to the tumors.

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Cannabis

This is the most important treatment option, that hardly any of the medical establishment is talking about. Why? Probably because of the stigma and taboo around anything the state has deemed "illegal". There is also a heavy monetary agenda for profit from keeping people hooked on the existing treatment options, rather than a plant that does it naturally. The cancer industry is a billion dollar industry. There are many people who are not interested in cures, but only in continual treatments.

Here is a video that explains cannabinoids and shows the targeting of cancer by cannainoids:

Food is also one of our best prevention and treatment options. Vibrant healthy plants are the best direct food source for all our nutritional needs. There are other alternative treatments to cancer not addressed in the source I used to make this post, as it was an establishment source. You can research things like Vitamin B17, Vitamin C, and other treatments that may or may not work. I know cannabis and real plant food is very beneficial though.

Cancer is a mean beast. We are still not addressing our environmental poisoning and pollution. We are going to keep battling the demons of health, and psychology, until we clean up our homes, both our planet we live on and our consciousness. We have cleaning to do before our houses get in order.

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[Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

[Source: 1]

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Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care.

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Author: Kris Nelson / @krnel
Contact: [email protected]
Date: 2016-10-18, 8:07am EST