Question: Do you think there will be a cure to cancer?

Ken Dutton-Regester answered on 12 Mar 2012:

Yeah this is an interesting question. I think I might be of the opinion that a cure for cancer won’t be the way to look at the problem. As cancer is incredibly tricky and nifty, a lot of drugs we make often become resistant after a while. As such, I think the future (at least for a large chuck of cancers) will involve controlling the growth of cancer for as long as possible. For some cancers we do have good drugs and long lasting responses (which are technically considered a cure) can occur. However, it often depends at which point the cancer is detected. If you detect a cancer early, the long term outcomes for the patient is usually better. If you detect it later once the cancer has spread to other parts of the body, the chances of survival drop. This is not to say one day we might have a cure or a bunch of cures for different cancers in the future. It would be an exciting time for everyone if we did come up with one.