Many volunteers around the world commit to raising money for cancer research and cancer charities. Many millions of thousands more work in the industry as caregivers or researching, prescribing, diagnosing and manufacturing medicines. Big companies spend fortunes on cancer research. After so much time and so many billions spent, what exactly has cancer research revealed?
There have been steady advances in our understanding of cancer, but little progress in its treatment. Modern cancer research began in the 1940s and 1950s when scientists isolated substances that killed cancer cells growing in a petri dish or leukemia cells in laboratory mice. The early successes in chemotherapy set the pace and received a lot of media exposure, even though they only applied to 5% of cancer treatments at most.
Serving humanity by solving its major diseases has celebrity status, there is a lot of accolades and an air of Hollywood involved in such things. Cancer research is a high-profile activity and from time to time a scientific treatment is discovered that gains wide recognition, such as the HPV-16 assay, but it is only applied to the treatment of a small percentage of cancers. Media hype is part of the problem with how we view cancer. The first discoveries created the expectation that there was a curative treatment, a ‘magic bullet’ that would make its discoverer famous by curing cancer throughout the world. The idea stems in part from aspirin, the original bullet that magically finds its way into pain and lessens it.
Huge and expensive research projects were set up in the 1950s and 1960s to test every known substance to see if it affected cancer cells. You may remember the discovery of the Madagascar periwinkle (Catharansus roseus), which revealed alkaloids (vinblastine and vincristine) that are still used in chemotherapy today. Taxol, a treatment for ovarian and breast cancer, originally comes from the Pacific Yew tree. A treatment for testicular cancer and small cell lung cancer called ‘etoposide’ was derived from the may apple. In Jonathan Hartwell’s ‘Plants Used Against Cancer’, he identifies more than 3000 plants from medical and folk sources to treat cancer, about half of which have been shown to have some effect on cancer cells in a test tube.
When these plants are made into synthetic drugs, the individual chemicals are isolated and the rest of the plant is usually thrown away. Medicinally active molecules are extracted from the plant and modified until they are chemically unique. The compound is then patented, given a trademark, and tested.
In the first phase it will be tested generally in animals, in the second phase the dosage levels will be decided and in phase 3 it will be tested in people. By the time it is approved by the Federal Medicines Authority (in the US) or the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulation Agency (MHRA) in Great Britain, the costs of developing a new drug they can reach half a billion dollars, which must eventually be recovered from the consumer.
In addition to ‘treatment-oriented’ research, such as finding chemicals that affect cancer cells, basic research continues apace, into the differences between normal and cancer cells. In the last 30 years this research has revealed much about our nature, but there is still no cure. Below are some current lines of scientific research on cancer.
Antibody Guided Therapy: This is the original ‘magic bullet’. Cancer researchers use monoclonal antibodies to deliver poisons directly to cancer cells without harming others.
Chronobiology: Much of what happens in our bodies is governed by cycles, from the female monthly cycle to brain wave cycles. Human health depends on interactive cycles oriented to acts of perception, respiration, reproduction and renewal. Chronobiology looks at these cycles in relation to different times, such as day and night. Hormones, including stress and growth hormones, have their own cycles. For example, they may be at their most active in the morning and quietest at night. Cancer cells do not seem to follow the same cycle rates as normal cells.
Anti-Telomerase: A part of a cell, called telomerase, governs the life cycle of a cell and how many times it can multiply. Some cancer cells escape this control and can increase the number of times they divide, becoming ‘immortal’. Researchers hope to control cancer cells by stopping the action of telomerase.
Anti-angiogenesis: Secondary tumors (metastases) can coax cells around them to grow new blood vessels to feed the tumors, supplying oxygen and nutrients for the growing cancer. This process is called angiogenesis, and the research here is finding ways to stop the signals to normal cells that start the process.
Non-stick molecules: Cancer cells form in clumps, unlike those in a petri dish, which form a flatter arrangement. When there are groups of cells, they seem to possess a quality that resists treatment. This line of research looks at ways that can prevent cells from clumping together, dissolving the clumps for more effective treatment.
Anti-oncogene products: Specific portions of DNA, called oncogenes, that have an important role in promoting cancer growth. Drugs that interfere with oncogene production may be useful for future cancer treatment.
Gene therapy: Research into the use of tumor suppressor genes is highlighted in the British National Cancer Plan as an important element. Essentially, snippets of DNA are inserted to replace missing or damaged genes, possibly preventing the development of cancer in someone who might be “high risk.”
Vaccines: The search for a general cure for cancer is being very quietly set aside in lieu of finding a vaccine. The whole idea of a ‘one size fits all’ cure or treatment falls apart in the case of the specific and chaotic conditions that cause cancer in an individual person. After spending billions researching the holy grail of a cancer cure, the search is now on for a vaccine.
At a recent cancer immunology conference in the US, top immunologists from 21 countries attended lectures on the latest immunology topics including: cancer immunosurveillance, immunoediting, cancer antigen discovery, cancer monitoring and analysis. immune response to human cancer, cancer vaccine development.
The Cancer Vaccine Collaborative (CVC) launched with great enthusiasm. It’s a unique research program that should improve the way cancer vaccines are developed, based on a collaboration of six New York medical centers and one in Minnesota. The aim of his research is to discover how to effectively immunize against cancer through a vaccine, through ‘action research’.
Vaccines made from donor blood are showing that they work for some types of cancer. Experiments with bone marrow transplants show that there are about 40,000 different tissue types, making it difficult to find a match. Usually, a perfect match can only be found within the immediate family of the patient. Wrong matches can create a number of secondary diseases. Scientists are finding ways to train killer T cells taken from the host or a donor to more effectively attack cancer cells. They have noticed that donor Killer T cells that are already ‘primed’ for a particular cancer (for example, the cells in the donor’s body ‘remember’ the disease) can be very effective. It may take many years to prove the validity, reliability, safety, and efficacy of this treatment. Harvesting natural immunity from our own cells or from donors with the help of genetic engineering may well become a big player against modern diseases that attack the immune system.
Increased screening: This type of research seeks to genetically identify people who might be at high risk for certain types of cancer and is partly in preparation for possible vaccines. Genetic counseling is destined to become a 21st century contributor to health care based on both disease prevention and cure.
Combinations: West German research (Grossart-Maticek) argues that there is no single cause for cancer, similar to the pattern in most chronic diseases. It shows that there are environmental, psychological and spiritual dimensions to illness. The implication is that treatment should be at the same levels, and that no single treatment is likely to be effective because there is no single cause. This observation ties in with the position of many holistic practitioners who often take a broader view of health than orthodox practitioners.
Dr. Robert Buckman is an experienced cancer researcher and author of the informative book What You Really Need to Know About Cancer. He summarizes what he sees as the current position of scientific cancer research:
“We now have a myriad of ways to look at cancer cells in the lab. We have thousands of different types of cancer cells growing in dishes, many of which can be grown and then cured in lab-bred mice. We also have thousands of different ways to look at and test those cells We can look at the growth of the cells, their ability to make different substances, their sensitivity to some chemotherapy drugs and their resistance to others, the way they respond to growth factors, their material including oncogenes and oncogene-controlled substances, their ability to affect other cells (of the immune system, for example), their ability to damage membranes and invade, their structure under the electron microscope, and whether or not the cell surface has any of the hundreds of different marker molecules on it.These are just a few examples of what can be done today in day: the full list of ways cancer cells can be analyzed would probably be longer than t his entire book. But here’s the catch: While this accumulation of experience is wonderful and commendable, cancer in humans is much more complicated than any laboratory system can be (at least in light of current knowledge).”