Why Cancer is So Hard to Cure: Explained
We humans, have studied every micro-fluid present in our bodies, built rockets that have gone to other plants, eradicated multiple pandemics and more, but after investing billions of dollars in its research and many of the smartest doctors dedicated to it, why have we still not found a cure for a disease responsible for the deaths of millions of people worldwide?
Cancer is an extremely intricate disease. It involves cells being infected by bacteria which mutates their genes and affects the DNA of their cells, making it a highly genetically transferrable disease. Cancer cells are extremely adaptable and grow at a rapid rate . Here are some of the factors that add up into making cancer treatment research a living nightmare.
1. It is not a single disease – The word “cancer” refers to many different conditions that have very few similarities. There are multiple types of cancers and though they may look the same on the outside each one develops differently and can originate anywhere in any one’s body. Every cancer is practically a different disease and there can be accurate predictions about its progress mostly because every cancer is caused by a different set of genetic mutations.
2. It divides uncontrollably- Proteins are the building blocks of life and humans are mostly made up of them. Nucleotides that are present in DNA molecules and contain information on how to synthesize protein and thus are present in a very specific order.
DNA---CHROMOSOMES---DNA MOLECULE----GENE----NUCLEOTIDES
Mutations caused because of cancer change the order of the proteins coded by the nucleotides. Cancer mutations can affect two types of genes:
- Oncogenes: It is a regular gene which signals proteins to grow. One mutation in these genes is enough to fully activate it, which means it makes cells continuously divide and grow and not stop even when it needs to. This also depends on the type of oncogene, the two most powerful ones are RAS and MYC. They are also one of the most common ones that cancer shows up in. When the RAS gene is infected, it changes the shape of the protein it makes and the protein gets stuck that always sends a signal for cell growth to take place, even if it isn’t supposed to. Thus the cell never gets a signal to stop growing and dividing and this continuous unhealthy growth forms tumours.
- Tumour suppressor cells: The tumour suppressor cells are responsible to limiting the growth of cells unless the conditions of the cell are supportable for growth. Every cell has two copies of a tumour suppressor, making them slightly harder to mutate as one copy can work perfectly, even in the absence of the other one. Tumour suppressors are mutated one chromosome, making it not work and the cell looses the chunk of DNA containing the other copy. When one tumour suppressor’s copy is deleted and one is mutated, there is no tumour suppressor left to control cell growth anymore
3. It affects MULTIPLE Genes and MULTIPLE mutations occur - One mutated gene is not enough to cause cancer and it causes multiple gene changes before a cell is considered cancerous. When more genes become mutated, the cancer becomes more aggressive. There are multiple mutations going on in a cell which is why a single drug may not even work for a patient even if its proven effective for that type of cancer and every tumour will follow a different genetic path which makes it harder for doctors to predict what’s fully going on in a cancerous persons body and to know what to target.
Why current cancer treatments don’t work effectively:
A tumour cell cannot be killed if doctors do not know what genes are supporting its growth. Sometimes, doctors use tools to cut tumours out of the body which is not the most effective way as tumours usually grow back and it is not possible to conduct this procedure in some parts of the body. Chemotherapy and radiation are treatments that attack all rapidly dividing cells in the human body, even other than cancer cells.
Radiation- Ionizing radiation can ionize items and tear DNA to shreds. Once the cancer cells DNA is beyond recognition, it is forced to stop making copies of itself but it damages the DNA of nearby healthy cells.
Chemotherapy- Chemotherapy is the consumption of a combination of effective drugs that supposedly reduce cancer, but because they circulate through the blood stream they affect the whole body. Other types of chemo target the cell’s cytoskeleton so that it cannot pull itself apart when it divides but it would also cause a lot of healthy cells in your body to stop dividing including hair follicles, due to which cancer patients lose their hair.
