Why Are We So Lagging Behind In Cancer Treatment?

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It is widely agreed that certain progress in cancer treatment has been made in the last five years, but people and healthcare professionals engaged in cancer management and research still believe that much more is desired for cancer care. However, the blog “Why Are We So Lagging In Cancer Treatment?” will discuss some of the causes that slow down the improvement of cancer treatment today. This blog deals with the challenges and provides information on the current treatments for cancer.

The Complexity of Cancer

Cancer is more than a hundred diseases characterized by uncontrolled growth of cells, so it is not easy to plan treatment methods. More often, cancer is looked at as a single disease while it is made up of different types, and even two patients diagnosed with the same kind of cancer can be different. These differences come from genetic changes, environment, and individual patient factors. Because of this, a treatment that works for one person may not work for another, making it challenging to apply the same therapies to everyone.

Research and Development Challenges

The discovery of new cancer-fighting therapies is urgent because it takes time and is likely to cost a lot of money. Therefore, inventing a drug or a therapy requires between 10 and 15 years to have that drug or therapy made available to the people. During the process, several phases of clinical trials, and approval also fall into this category. Pharmaceutical firms avoid funding and developing rare types of cancer because introducing new products to the market significantly costs a fortune. 

Furthermore, clinical trials are always associated with recruitment issues. For this reason, most patients do not volunteer to participate in such programs because of the side effects they face or any available experimental treatments. This can break the discovery rate and make it slow to bring new therapies to the market, but not as often as they should.

Access to Treatments

Even once these treatments are successful, accessibility also becomes an issue. It is probable that in various healthcare systems, not all patients can access state-of-the-art treatments. The patient’s geographic location, socio-economic status, and insurance status determine how soon and well they are treated. For example, with the latest cell therapy technologies like CAR-T cell therapy or individually designed vaccines such as mRNA vaccines, only a few medical centers are designed to provide these services, so patients in rural regions or low-population districts cannot receive proper treatment. 

Moreover, innovative treatments can be expensive, and some patients can experience financial burden. Most of the new treatment options are costly, so patients can quickly end up in huge debts or use their savings, or even worse, they avoid using the treatment options altogether.

Evolving Treatment Paradigms

Conventional treatments (Radiation and chemotherapy) are still crucial in cancer treatments today. However, there is a growing focus on target-oriented medicine. This approach tailors treatment based on an individual’s tumour DNA analysis. As a result, these treatments are usually less invasive and may have fewer risks than traditional methods. On a larger scale, personalised medicine requires testing samples and using bioinformatics, but these practices are not yet standard worldwide. 

Recent advancement such as immunotherapy can improve the immune response and fight tumour cells. These treatments have revolutionised the management of many cancers and may have some potential negative effects or outcomes. At this moment some of the experimental cancer treatment to a range of tumours will be at stake. 

The Role of Technology

Technology has helped bring about excellent progress in diagnosing and treating e cancer. For example, precision oncology, which looks at the genetic changes in tissues to help choose a treatment process, is a step up in precision care. Further, advancements like therapeutic and diagnostic agents or theranostics, like drugs used to diagnose and treat cancer, are beginning to feature as dominant weapons in handling diseases. However, implementing new technologies in clinical care settings has remained a bottleneck due to the training of care providers and delayed clinical practice guidelines.

Future Directions

For the future, we expect to overcome cancer treatment challenges through research teamwork, better funding for cancer studies, and stronger healthcare laws to ensure everyone has equal access to treatment. New cancer therapies look promising. Treatments like personalized vaccines and improved radiation technology should improve success rates. 

Improving understanding of clinical trials helps bring in more potential participants. This also gives patients better treatment options while waiting for standard medicine alternatives.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we know so much about cancer and how to approach it, but some issues keep cancer treatment from being not available to everyone. For more people to be helped, there is still a need to find ways of treating cancer and ensure everyone has access to the various treatments. Therefore, to improve cancer care for all, we, as a team, invite you to join the discussion and explore the future of cancer care.

Sources:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10064104/

https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-q-and-a-5-advances-in-cancer-treatment/

https://www.aacr.org/blog/2023/01/13/experts-forecast-cancer-research-and-treatment-advances-in-2023/

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/10/cancer-treatment-and-diagnosis-breakthroughs/

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/nca50/stories/advances-in-treatment-and-care

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/nca50/stories/technologies-and-innovations