Question: How close are we to solving the cure for cancer?

Srinath Kasturirangan answered on 1 Mar 2019:

That is a great question. You may be aware that there are many different types of cancers and all cancers are not created equal. There are cancers which occur only in children, cancers which occur only in men or women, cancers that are unique to a particular demographics of the population, or cancers that are more related to environment factors or people’s habits.

I am quite happy to say that for pediatric cancers, particularly leukemia in children, there are several options for cure available and in most part of the world, if the cancer in children is detected early and treated, most children survive and go on to live a normal life. Same is the case for breast cancer, ovarian cancer and uterine cancer in women and prostate cancer in men.

However, there are some cancers which are REALLY difficult to detect and/or cure. Brain cancer is toughest of the lot, since it is so hard to get any drugs into the brain. The brain has a special barrier called the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB) that blocks most things from getting into the brain – and for good reason too! However, the same BBB also keeps out the drugs we want to get into the brain to treat illnesses. So people are coming up with cool and unique ways to trick the BBB to get drugs into the brain to cure diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons and brain cancer. If this works, it will be an amazing scientific breakthrough.

As they always say, prevention is better than cure. Early diagnosis can help the doctors find and get rid of most cancers before they spread to other parts of the body. So it is important to go for routine check ups with your doctor, whether you are sick or not, and also to keep away from bad habits like smoking that can really increase the risk of cancer.