Cancer is a leading cause of death globally according to the World Health Organization. In 2020, it accounts for nearly 10 million deaths worldwide. The sad reality is that some malignant cancers remain incurable despite remarkable progress achieved in cancer diagnosis and treatment.
The good news is that novel therapeutic breakthroughs are continuously being made to fight cancer!
I’m going to highlight a few of numerous advances, especially those tackling common malignant cancers.
1. Precision oncology
Cancer differs from one individual to another. Precision oncology equips doctors to tailor cancer treatment specifically to a person’s cancer. Genes, proteins, or even blood vessels that promote cancer cells to grow and metastasize are targeted in these therapies. Leveraging biomarkers (genes, proteins, and different types of molecule) plays an essential role in personalized medicine and in fighting cancer. The validated biomarkers can improve risk stratification, cancer screening and differential diagnosis, evaluate cancer prognosis, and predict response to treatment. Along with the patient’s data, optimal therapy decision can be made. In other words, biomarkers facilitate the effort that can match the right patient with the right treatment at the right time. For instance, the innovation has been applied in diagnostic test for lung cancer and target treatment for metastatic breast cancer.
2. Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy harnesses your own immune system to beat cancer. It uses the immune cells from a patient or a transplant donor to attack blood cancer cells (e.g., in leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma), especially cancers that are resistant to chemotherapy or remain after chemotherapy. Immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors has been approved for the first-line therapy of advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Immunotherapy through novel approaches used alone or in combination has substantially improved clinical outcomes of oncology and hematology, including in metastatic melanoma. Certainly, immunotherapy is intriguing and full of complexity, especially when some cancers don’t respond to it well.
3. Controlled Nitric Oxide (NO) delivery
NO is a small, very reactive signaling molecule with a half-life less than 10 seconds. It regulates various key physiological functions, including blood vessel dilation, bronchial dilation, neuronal communication, and wound healing, etc. Underproduction of endogenous NO contributes to several chronic conditions from cardiovascular and lung diseases to cancer. Inhaled NO has been a valuable therapy for neonatal pulmonary hypertension, pulmonary inflammation control, and some heart and lung surgeries.
Not in India, you can find wonderful them throughout the world through several india pharmacy viagra online providers. This action helps your heart and blood vessels in the penis causing a lack of blood flow which in turn helps in preventing clotting in arteries and veins. best price sildenafil They other viagra for sale don’t even talk to their doctor about their symptoms. Due to the jelly format and being more than a treatment, tadalafil 20mg price it has has become a fantasy providing solution for men of older age. However, effects of NO on tumors are multifaced; promoting or inhibiting cancer growth depending on tumor microenvironment. Because NO has been implicated in many signaling pathways in colon cancer and exogenously sustained levels of NO cause cytotoxicity, NO-donor/agents has been employed to deliver a high level of NO to tumor sites in the colon. So, NO—a magic molecule—can be used for colon cancer therapy. Now it is recognized that a right concentration and duration of NO presence at a particular site plays a prominent role in the regulation of cancer biology.
4. Virus-based treatment or engineered oncolytic viruses
Multidrug resistance is a big problem in cancer therapy, especially chemotherapy. Now oncolytic viruses are used to kill cancer cells by exploiting cancer cell-specific vulnerabilities and infecting them while sparing normal cells. Unlike vaccine-strain viruses failing to meet some critical safety and efficacy criteria, these genetically engineered viruses (such as oncolytic measles virus or adenovirus) enhance cancer therapy in clinical efficiency. Virus-based treatment has been used in glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor; also, in breast cancer and lung cancer.
5. Proton beam therapy (PBT) as advanced radiation therapy
Radiation therapy has been advancing rapidly in various ways. One way is proton therapy. Protons are positively charged particles of energy, a form of radiation that can send an intense burst of energy to a highly focused area, which means it kills cancer cells without damaging healthy tissues nearby. PBT therapy has been used for several common cancers including the lung, breast and prostate cancer as well as brain cancer.
Although many challenges remain to reach the full therapeutic potentials of these advanced biomedical technologies, future treatments for patients with cancer are very promising!
These exciting breakthroughs inspire us to prevent cancer by strengthening our body’s natural defense, so that the immune system can watch for and attack cancer cells effectively. We can also take advantage of new technologies for protection from common cancers (e.g., colon, breast, cervical, and prostate cancer), because they can be controlled if detected early and treated adequately.
Image credit: Pixabay, Clipart-Library, CancerPreventionDaily