• Question: Can cancer be cured

    Asked by anon-186282 to Andy, Danny, Verity, Trystan, Raquel, Catherine on 11 Nov 2018. This question was also asked by anon-186305, anon-186312.
    • Photo: Danny Ward

      Danny Ward answered on 11 Nov 2018:

      Lots of talented scientists are working on cures for cancer. We actually have some medicines that patients have used and have worked on their cancer. The problem is there are so many different types of cancer and each patient is different, one medicine may work great in one person or not at all in another. This is a big challenge as a medicine for one type of cancer won’t necessarily work for any other types.
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      Most of the anti-cancer medications we have developed are able to extend a patients life by a few years/months/weeks. In some cases, they go in to remission and cured of cancer. Scientists are continuing to make more medications everyday to try to get more cures but its tough, expensive and requires lots of testing!

    • Photo: Verity Hill

      Verity Hill answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      Cancer is a tricky problem because it’s actually lots of different diseases that work in different ways. I

      Ideally we would want a big, general drug that kills cancer cells, but this is also damaging to our healthy cells.
      Usually when you make a drug against a bacteria for example, you target the bits that are different between human and bacterial cells, like the way they replicate. Because cancer cells are human cells, it’s difficult to distinguish between them. That’s why people’s hair falls out during cancer treatment – the drugs we use target any fast dividing cell, which includes cancer cells, but also hair, skin and the lining of your gut.
      Hopefully one day we might be able to cure specific cancers though!

    • Photo: Trystan Leng

      Trystan Leng answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      Finding a cure for cancer is a really hard problem. Cancer is caused by mutations in a person’s cells, mutations that cause them to multiply abnormally. Because cancer is caused by this process of mutation, every cancer is slightly different. However, there are many brilliant and clever researchers working on finding a cure for different cancers, so I’m optimistic that cancer will be able to be cured some day!

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