By Mustafa Wehbe, Masters Student, Biomedical Science, University of East London
Diagnosing and treating cancer is one of the key challenges for modern medicine, which is continuously focused on developing new, sophisticated therapies with minimum side effects.
But what is cancer? The human body is made of organs, which are made of cells, the basic unit of life. Cells continuously divide and duplicate their content. Several pathways encoded in our DNA strictly control this process. When a cell starts reproducing indefinitely, it creates a mass of cells (a tumour).
Chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the two primary mechanisms of treatment used in cancer therapy, work by damaging the cell’s DNA, inhibiting the uncontrollable proliferation process and eventually killing the altered population.
One of the main problems encountered in chemotherapy is drug toxicity and a wide range of side effects that can affect the patient. Thankfully, there are other promising approaches which are currently being studied and developed by the scientific community. One of these, combinatorial treatment, the use of multiple drugs/therapies together, is becoming more prevalent. Different drugs have different targets. This means that when used together, the effectiveness of the treatment increases.
A cancer is a mass of cells and cells require nutrition which comes from blood. So, another scenario is that by cutting the blood supply to a tumour, it chokes and stops growing. This method is still being tested but represents a massive breakthrough in modern medicine as it doesn’t directly target cancer cells, minimising the side effects.
Other techniques being developed are called “target therapies”: drugs that act on the altered cells by interfering with mechanisms specific to a particular type of cancer involved in the tumour growth.
Finally, the NHS recently announced the implemention of a new treatment in the UK. This method, called CAR-T works by modifying the cells of our immune system to recognise and kill the cancer cells.
Many challenges remain when fighting this complex disease. Tremendous progress has been made in recent years, and the development of new techniques and methodologies to treat cancer is a constant priority for the scientific community.
