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Asked by to David, Johanna, Linda, Tamas, Tom on 13 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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David Davila answered on 13 Jun 2014:
Aight, so I’m no cancer researcher, but I’m gonna give this a shot:
So step 1 is to understand what cancer really is: All of your cells are multiplying all the time, and sometimes a cell might go HAYWIRE and start multiplying waayyyyyy too much. It forms a bunch of cells that do the same thing and then this causes massive problems.The reason that this is so hard to fix is that we’re trying to kill our own cells. How can we find a way to kill these cells when they look and act almost the same as all the other cells in our body?
There are some solutions so far, but they’re far from perfect:
1) Surgery. We find the place where these cells are and just cut them out. Unless they’ve already spread through the body.
2)Radiation. We find where these cells are, but this time we focus radio waves just on the spot where they are and kill them until they’re dead. But it also tends to kill the cells nearby.
3) Chemotherapy. We have some chemicals that can find haywire cells and kill them. But it’s kind of a harsh treatment on your body – you can ask my aunt =/ (she’s doing great now though!
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Linda Cremonesi answered on 13 Jun 2014:
That’s again another interesting question.
Actually, cancer is a very “weird” kind of disease, because it’s not generated by a bacteria or by a virus (e.g. HIV is a virus). So a disease that is generated by a bacteria can be defeated using antibiotics, whereas a disease that is generated by a virus can usually be prevented with a vaccination or can be cured in other ways if the cure is known.
Cancer is different. Cancer comes from a malfunction in cell reproduction. So, cell in your body continuously divide and reproduce (as much as you need it of course), so for example when you cut your finger, for your wound to heel you need skin cell to reproduce and you won’t look like the monster of Frankenstein any more. Cancer happens when there’s something going wrong in the cell division and cells start reproducing without control, killing your own healthy cells!!!
There are different types of cancer actually and if it’s not too late and the position is “easy” to access, cancer can be removed by surgery.
Otherwise there is radiotherapy (we will bomb cancer with some high radiation to kill it!) or chemiotherapy (chemicals will be injected in the patient and they will find the cancer and kill it).
If surgery on one side is very invasive (it’s not very nice to have somebody cut you open like a tuna can usually :/), radiotherapy and chemiotherapy can be very tough to handle because of the consequences they have on your whole body. -
Thomas Smith answered on 16 Jun 2014:
I decided to take a cancer research friend for a coffee and ask her about this one (so thanks must go to my friend Kat!) Here is roughly what she had to say:
Cancer cells have faults in the part of the cell that controls their growth. Normally cells divide (grow) only when needed but cancer cells have a fault which means that they grow uncontrollably. One of the problems with cancer is that it is not one disease but many different diseases, although they all have the common feature of uncontrollable cell growth. So lung cancer is different to breast cancer for example. Also different lung cancers may also be different to each other. This means that it is very hard to treat, and it is unlikely that there will ever be a single “cure” for cancer.
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Johanna Fischer answered on 17 Jun 2014:
Well one answer to this could be that cancer is not only one disease. There is many different causes, which lie in environmental factors, but also cancer cells can also occur in the body just spontaneous. There are many different mechanisms to beat cancer and one cure for one, might not be suitable for another cancer type.
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Tamas Korcsmaros answered on 17 Jun 2014:
This is a great question. Thousands of scientist (including me 🙂 ) are working on it. I would say that there are at least two reasons why it is so hard to overcome cancer. First, even a specific type of cancer (e.g., lung or colon cancer) can be built up of different cancer cells. The scientists call it hetergenity. A therapy that could destroy one cancer cell population could leave the other uneffected. Second, all living forms, including over cells have great defence mechanisms that help to survive in strange situations (e.g, after burning or cutting your finger, breaking your bone, etc). Unfortunately, cancer cells are generaly using these mechanisms for their own survival.
Furthermore, there are also two things that we should clarify. There is no general cancer therapy. As my scientist colleagues already wrote there are different cancer types and each of them requires different therapies. Second, there are already some great successes against some cancer types. Some type of lymphomas, colon cancer and certains type of breast cancer could be effecticly treated.
Finally, I would like to correct what Linda wrote. Lot of cancer types are in many cases indeed connected to viral and bacterial infections (liver and cervical cancer are the most well-known). Most importantly, vaccines against some virus, like hepatatis and HPV (human papilloma virus) can significantly help to avoid the develepoment of these cancer types. Especially anti-HPV vaccines, which are very effective against cervical cancer. For bacterial species the picture is not that clear yet, though Helicobacter pylori and astric cancer is a well-known connection. Lot of work and analysis should be done in the next few years to identify clear bacterial influence on each cancer type.
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