What would a "cure for cancer" consist of?

[zagloba]

Gene therapy for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations (breast cancer) seems plausible.

On another angle, theres the HPV vaccine that is now becoming available and has the potential to prevent a large percentage of virally caused cervical cancers.

[dtilque]

@irishgirl

I think in the future that most cancer drugs will work in a similar way to Glivec.

Thanks for the mantle[sup]1[/sup], irishgirl

[sup]1[/sup] Mantle of invisibility, that is.

[dtilque]

Here’s another approach to curing cancer: decitabine.

Scientists are learning how a new class of anticancer drugs carries out its unusual way of fighting cancer. The drugs re-activate genes that normally protect against cancer but have been turned off.

[cerberus]

A note on Gardasil, the vaccine for HPV. It is a recombinant vaccine, containing key proteins for HPV types 6,11, 16 and 18. Types 6 and 11 are linked to genital warts and to CIN, and types 16 and 18 to CIN and overt cervical cancer.

Gardasil only works prophylactically in preventing cervical cancer, genital warts and CIN, by preventing the infection in those who are HPV free.

The complicated bit here is that there is something like 100 types of HPV, only a few which present clinical interest. So in principle, anyone who is free of types 6, 11, 16, 18 may benefit from the vaccine.

But the vaccine isn’t of any real utility to those who are already infected.

[Tuckerfan]

Apparently, there’s some evidence that stem cells might be involved.

This idea–that a small population of malignant stem cells can cause cancer–is far from new. Stem cell research is considered to have begun in earnest with studies during the 1950s and 1960s of solid tumors and blood malignancies. Many basic principles of healthy tissue genesis and development were revealed by these observations of what happens when the normal processes derail.