Cancer cure: Scientists work hard to find ‘the cure’ and here are the reasons why it is not yet available

Doctors and scientists have been working for years to find a cancer cure that can effectively treat the patients. Since the cancerous tumors have been found to have more than just one kind of cancer cell, this could explain why there are many types that make the disease hard to treat.

This may also be the reason why a certain type of cure or medicine may work for some types of cancers but not for others. It was said that to solve this problem, cancer treatments that are being used today are usually a combination of therapies to hit the tumor and eradicate it from the body.

Cancer cells can change

As per the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, cancer cure is taking a long time to arrive because most drugs work well in the initial tries but later, the cancerous cells become resistant to them so they continue to grow. This is because the tumors can mutate and these deadly cells have a high chance of doing this mutation that makes them resist the drugs.

The only thing that patients can do when the drug turned resistant is to shift to another treatment. “Yes, patients have to change therapies, and they’re on therapies for a long time, but their lives can be extended for years and years,” the center’s Dr. Joyce Ohm stated.

The cancerous cells can live for a long time

Cancer cells can survive and live for a long time and with their capacity to “stay alive,” the treatments and medicines may not work for as long as expected. Also, it was added that these cells can always find ways to protect themselves from medicines or treatments. As a result, these treatments become useless and doctors need to formulate new ones.

The working treatment right now is the immunotherapy but as times go by, its effect is also becoming weaker perhaps, because the cancer cells are mutating or have found methods to evade it. Will a cancer cure ever be found? Doctors stated that they are doing their best and somehow making some progress.

“We’re making progress,” Dr. Ohm said. “It feels slow, and sometimes it’s not fast enough for our patients. We know that, and that’s hard, but we are making tremendous progress. Today, when treatments do fail, we have a bigger toolbox.”