Cancer Cure: Researchers reveal the key in the successful treatment of the Big C

Cancer is a disease that people fear mainly because it doesn’t a cure and death is imminent if the patient failed to get a series of treatments that are really expensive. The worst thing is that - most of the time, even if the patients exhausted all the possible means to get rid of cancer, they still lose their battle with the disease.

This is why just the mere mention of the word “cancer” is enough to make anyone panic. Moreover, almost everyone knows someone who had suffered from this disease so people are very much aware of what they had to go through to fight and survive.

Is there a cure?

More than a hundred years ago, cancer is already around but in those times, early diagnosis is impossible so often, those who have it are diagnosed when it is already in the advanced or fourth stage. But today, with modern technology, patients can get early diagnosis thus their chances for survival increase.

But sadly, there is no known cancer cure yet but treatments like chemotherapy and radiation are available to help shrink malignant tumors and give patients a better chance for recovery. Then again, the recurrence of the cancerous cells is possible since there is no cure but only treatments that can melt the cancer cells instead of completely banishing them from the human body. Based on the study of scientists at the American Association for Cancer Research, if the cancer is caught early on, patients have a hundred percent five-year survival rate.

Cancer vaccines

Scientists are trying to make cancer vaccines and they are making this by better understanding how cancer develops and how the immune system responds to the antibodies. By availing this vaccine, it can help stop the disease from progressing and prevent relapse after being cleared of cancer after treatments.

“T cells are hardwired to go after invaders like viruses and bacteria. The idea behind a cancer vaccine is to try to train the immune system to recognize tumor cells as a target,” Cancer Health magazine quoted Dr. Catherine Wu of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute and a recipient of a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Clinical Investigator Award as saying. “Cancer has figured out how to make itself invisible to the immune system. What we’re trying to do with vaccines is remove that cloak of invisibility.”

The key to successful treatment of cancer

Meanwhile, modern treatments can make use of the human immune system to fight cancer. However, the problem is that treatments don’t work in all patients and often, this is due to the fact that there is no underlying immune recognition of cancer.

The good news is that researchers have found the key to treat the disease successfully. As per Our Health, after doctors worked on patients, they discovered that their individual immune system and their genetic makeup is the key in curing cancer. With this, they can personalize the treatment based on the patients’ needs and type of cancer. Finally, Dr. Michael O’Neill, a radiation oncologist at Centra’s Alan B. Pearson Regional Cancer Center in Lynchburg said that using immunotherapy and advanced radiation technology together will help treat people even if they are already in advanced stages.