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Asked by icancu to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 19 Mar 2013.
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Tom Branson answered on 19 Mar 2013:
This is quite unlikely. There are lots of different types of cancer in different parts of the body and each needs a special treatment.
But cancer research is one of the biggest areas of science research and so we hope that most forms of cancer wil be controllable if not curable in the future.
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Yalda Javadi answered on 19 Mar 2013:
Unfortunately not quite…. Only because cancer is a very complex disease, and there are so many different types that each behave very differently. So you have to take that into account when designing drugs…. so just one drug for all seems unlikely. I like your thinking though 🙂
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Jack Heal answered on 19 Mar 2013:
That would be amazing, but it’s very unlikely. Cancer is when cells don’t die, they just grow in an unchecked way. There are lots of different types and they behave in different ways, so just having one drug which stopped all types of cancer is probably not going to happen. But having one separate drug for each type of cancer would be almost as good. Hopefully we can get closer and closer to that by doing more research and making more treatments!
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anon answered on 19 Mar 2013:
Cancer happens when cells keep multiplying rather than dying – but different things cause this in different cancers. Having a single medicine that would cure all cancers probably isn’t going to happen – even cancers that we treat today often need lots of different drugs to beat them. The sciencey word for that is “polychemotherapy” – try saying that quickly three times in a row!
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