Question: How is cancer cured?

Isabel Pires answered on 9 Mar 2015:

The most efficient way doctors have to try and get rid of a tumour is to cut it off and remove it using surgery. It is still the most effective way to treat cancer.

However, sometimes surgery alone does not work. This could be because the tumour is too hard to get to or too big or small to remove by surgery, or because it is a blood cancer (like leukaemia), or just in case it has already spread.

In that case doctors use chemotherapy or radiotherapy. In chemotherapy treatments, the doctors give the cancer patient a medication that will hopefully kill the cancers cells specifically. It is normally given directly into the blood or, in some cases, by taking a tablet. In radiotherapy treatments, the doctors use high energy X-rays beams targeted directly at the tumour, in order to kill it.

However, these two methods have side effects. Chemotherapy targets cells which are dividing fast (such as in the cancer). However, other normal cells in the body that also divide fast, such as hair roots, skin, the lining of the gut and white blood cells, are also affected. This is why some cancer patients having chemo can loose their hair and feel sick and tired. Also, radiotherapy can damage the normal organs and cells surrounding the cancer.

So now scientists (such as myself) are trying to discover new, clever treatments to kill the tumour with less side effects. This can be done by either using medication which is very specific to the tumour alone, and therefore does not affect normal cells, or by giving these new types of medication at the same time as radiotherapy or chemotherapy to make the cancer cells more sensitive to them, and/or decreasing the effects on normal cells.