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Science Forum Index » Medicine - Cancer Forum » Gaining ground on cancer
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| E.Nigma |
 Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 1:30 pm |
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By Susan Hockfield | April 28, 2008
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008
/04/28/gaining_ground_on_cancer/
IN 1971, President Nixon launched the War on Cancer, with the
optimistic goal of defeating the disease in eight years with $100
million. More than 35 years and $79 billion later, the war is far
from won. While 2002 marked the first-ever yearly decline in US
cancer deaths, more than 40 percent of Americans will still contract
cancer in their lifetime. What's more, although effective therapies
have emerged for some cancers, other types stubbornly resist therapy,
and many patients find treatment itself debilitating.
Given the scale of the problem, advocates like Lance Armstrong call
for increased federal funding for cancer research. But, if we have
spent so much without defeating the disease, why should we think that
further spending will finally conquer the 200 or more diseases we now
know as cancer?
There are two reasons. First, fundamental research takes time,
sometimes decades, and we are only now reaping some of the rewards of
the fundamental work triggered by the War on Cancer. The drug
Herceptin offers highly effective therapy for women with one type of
breast cancer; its development depended on molecular discoveries made
at MIT in 1979, amplified and extended by the work of researchers at
many institutions since.
The second reason to be optimistic about progress on cancer is that
recent innovations have dramatically accelerated cancer research.
In the early 1990s, when fundamental research in my own neurobiology
lab opened a new approach to primary brain cancer, gains came slowly,
one protein or one gene at a time, and depended on experimental
systems that only partially mimicked human disease. Today, thanks to
new technologies, researchers collect and analyze more data in a year
than their mentors could in a whole career. Startling new tools from
chemical, biological, and nano-scale engineering have dramatically
shortened the road to new discoveries and new therapies - as we have
seen already in revolutionary cardiac treatments like drug-eluting
stents.
With these capabilities, we can finally tackle persistent problems in
cancer treatment and detection: attacking the tumor specifically,
rather than flooding the patient with drugs toxic to normal tissues
as well as cancer; or detecting recurrence, not at scheduled check-up
intervals, but when the tumor starts making new cells. At last,
through the combined powers of biology and technology, we can start
to talk seriously about doing for cancer what we have done for AIDS -
transforming it from a terminal disease to a treatable chronic
condition.
At MIT and elsewhere, for example, researchers are building a new
class of anti-cancer "smart bombs," nanoscale particles filled with
cancer-fighting drugs and covered with homing molecules that direct
them exclusively to cancer cells. By leaving healthy cells untouched
while delivering anti-cancer drugs directly to a tumor, these
nanotherapies hold the promise of more effective treatments at much
lower doses, with a dramatic drop in side effects like nausea,
fatigue, and hair loss.
Other MIT research teams are developing minute sensors to lodge at
the site of a tumor during surgery. If the cancer recurs, the sensor
will detect it at the level of just a few cells, eliminating the
agonizing uncertainty between doctor visits and allowing treatment to
begin immediately.
New strategies like these are profoundly exciting, but further
progress against cancer, at MIT and at leading hospitals and
universities around the country, will depend on how much we are
willing to pay for it. Federal and industry funding, along with
farsighted private philanthropy, have fueled cancer research.
Unfortunately, funding for the National Cancer Institute has been
flat for the past four years. Further progress will require further
investment.
In these increasingly difficult economic times, we rush to ask, "What
would it cost?" A better question is "What would it return?" In 1980,
HIV-AIDS did not even have a name; soon after, it was projected that
AIDS patients would fill every bed in every hospital in America. NIH
moved into action, investing $15 billion in research. That's a lot of
money. But as Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes
of Health observes, that investment saved $1.4 trillion in hospital
costs and has given AIDS patients the possibility of a normal life
span.
In the same way, for cancer, in all its permutations, there will be
only one cure: research.
Susan Hockfield, a guest columnist, is the president of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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