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Every cancer is different. There will never be a single drug that deals with all cancers at once. Every cancer originates from a specific organ and even though
by vaylian 7y ago
Every cancer is different. There will never be a single drug that deals with all cancers at once. Every cancer originates from a specific organ and even though the cancer is a collective of degenerated cells, it's program will still resemble the program of the original cells.
The nasty thing about cancers is that their development is probabilistic. Some cancers may develop in a more common way for which there are already effective drugs. But you might also get unlucky and get a less typical/less studied form of a cancer and then your treatment options are much worse.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoThis is slightly inaccurate. Pan-cancer treatments are rare but do exist, for example checkpoint inhibitors. They just work differently on every cancer and have different outcomes for each type of cancer. The single biggest factor right now on treatment outcomes is how quickly you find the cancer, because surgery early on is the best treatment, usually followed up with chemotherapy. These "miracle" treatments really are most impactful for late stage patients, especially those that aren't very expressive which means it's harder to find something to bind to the cancer cells and kill them.