Humanity Beats the Cancer Curse: 7 Innovative Cancer Treatments That Will Change the World

According to the World Health Organization, in 2020 alone, cancer caused the death of about 10 million people worldwide. But medicine is developing, and scientists have made a significant breakthrough in the treatment of cancer.

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A significant expansion of scientific knowledge about human biology at the molecular and genetic levels opens the door to a potential golden era in the treatment of complex diseases, including cancer. Chemo- and radiotherapy are becoming safer, new innovative methods of treatment are emerging.

Breakthrough cancer drug

Of course, the list of innovations should start with the most famous drug, which caused a real storm of emotions both among scientists and angry people far from medicine who learned about the study. With this drug, 100% of the participants in the experiment were able to fully fight rectal cancer (also with complex MMR mutations). This is about dostarlimabe. This summer, he became a real hit in the news around the world.

Dostarlimab is an immunotherapeutic drug with which doctors managed to completely destroy the cancerous tumors of patients without chemotherapy, surgery and radiation. The very first patient who defeated the disease with the help of dostarlimab has been leading a full-fledged cancer-free life for more than two years.

Read more about this drug in our material "Scientists may have found a cure for cancer: how the drug works that caused remission in all subjects«.

CAR-T cell therapy (or targeted immunotherapy)

CAR-T is a treatment in which doctors "program" immune cells to identify and kill cancerous tumors. Scientists have learned to find genetic and protein abnormalities in patients' tumors and use this data through therapy.

This method has recently been found to be successful for patients with leukemia. At the same time, targeted immunotherapy in the future can give good results in the treatment of many types of cancer.

In a little more detail, a treatment called CAR T cell therapy involves the removal and genetic modification of immune cells (T cells) in cancer patients. The altered cells then produce proteins called chimeric antigen receptors (CARs). They recognize and can destroy cancer cells.

Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania announced that the first two patients who received CAR-T cell therapy were in remission 12 years after treatment.

It is worth noting that this therapy has been recognized by the Food and Drug Administration as an effective treatment for blood cancer and as a promising treatment for large tumors.

On the subject: In the United States, a cure for cancer has been developed, on which scientists have high hopes: it has been created for more than 25 years

Non-Profit Clinical Research Center City of Hope has one of the most comprehensive CAR T cell programs in the world. The center conducts almost 50 clinical trials of these cells on cancer patients. They are mainly used to treat blood cancers, diseases of the immune system, and large tumors. Over 600 patients have been treated with CAR T-cells in the City of Hope.

Based on this therapy, medical preparations have also been developed.

As the scientists report says, “A revolutionary drug called Pembrolizumab (Keytruda), an immune checkpoint inhibitor, was developed to stop a protein that blocks the immune system. It's called PD-L1, and its main purpose is to allow immune cells to destroy cancer. The concentration of PD-L1 in cancer cells can exceed 90%, making it a highly targeted protein. The drug has been successfully used to treat melanoma and other skin cancers, as well as cancers of the breast, lung, endometrium, kidney, esophagus and many other types of cancer, bringing once neglected and even fatal diseases into a state of remission.

Precision Oncology

Precision oncology is "the best new weapon to defeat cancer." This is how Xiren Wang, CEO of Genetron Health, described it in блоге for the World Economic Forum.

This method involves the study of the molecular characteristics of cancerous tumors in individual patients. Each tumor has a specific unique characteristic. And the more information the doctor can get about the genetic changes in the tumor, the more accurately he will be able to choose the methods of therapy.

Because precision cancer treatments are targeted (as opposed to general treatments like chemotherapy), this can mean less harm to healthy cells and, as a result, fewer side effects.

This method is currently under development. To achieve breakthrough results, scientists need to collect a considerable amount of different information about the molecular structure of cancer cells.

Weakening the defenses of cancer cells

Scientists from World Institute for Cancer Research in Argentina were able to create a new strategy for the treatment of cancer, which helps to make immunotherapy more effective in destroying aggressive types of cancer, in particular prostate cancer.

The development of this method began with the discovery by Dr. Diego Laderach and his team of a tumor defense mechanism called galectin-3. It protects cancer from attacks by the body's immune system.

To overcome this defense mechanism, scientists have created a chemotherapy drug. docetaxel.

“Our experience shows that treatment with a small dose of docetaxel after surgical removal of the tumor, followed by the use of immunotherapy, leads to the successful elimination of cancer,” says Dr. Laderach. "The next step is to collaborate with clinicians to bring this method into clinical trials."

Drugs Used to Treat Depression, Erectile Dysfunction, and Heart Disease May Save Cancer

It's no secret that scientists have been diagnosing cancer for over 150 years by analyzing the size of the cell nucleus. Changes in size show the stage of the disease. So, based on these data, researchers from the universities of Edinburgh, Montreal and Eastern Finland began to test drugs, which would affect precisely the change in the size of the nucleus in the cells. The focus was on three types of cancer: prostate, colon and lung.

As a result of the analysis, scientists were able not only to test the effectiveness of a large number of existing cancer drugs, but also to confirm the effectiveness of drugs that were previously used to treat depression, heart disease, erectile dysfunction and destruction of parasites.

Although each drug identified requires further testing to see if it is effective in reducing metastases in cancer patients, the analysis identified about ten drugs that may be effective for each of the three cancers studied.

Because the drugs are able to target certain types of cancer cells and are generally non-toxic, they can be added to existing therapies to reduce metastasis without additional use of existing toxic chemotherapy agents.

outsmart the tumor

Great interest among oncologists from all over the world was caused by the results of testing a new cancer drug - Enhertu. This drug is an antibody-drug conjugate (i.e., a complex molecule that uses the antibody to enter the tumor cell before releasing a toxic substance for destruction).

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This precise method of releasing toxins makes chemotherapy less harmful to the body.

The antibody of this drug focuses on a protein called HER2, which signals the growth of the tumor (for example, in some cases of breast cancer, this signal is amplified).

The US Food and Drug Administration approved Enhertu at the end of 2019 for certain so-called HER2-positive cancers or tumors that show a certain threshold of this signal during a diagnostic test.

Artificial intelligence against cancer

Some leading scientists from India relied on the latest technologies in the fight against cancerespecially on artificial intelligence (AI). Smart machines can detect common types of cancer, such as breast cancer, at an early stage. Let's say AI is being used to analyze X-rays, detecting the beginnings of tumors where even the most talented human expert cannot yet see the problem.

sentient robots able not only to take into service all the information available to mankind about the diagnosis and treatment of oncological diseases, but also to independently learn and develop by analyzing the stored information, as well as offering new, most accurate solutions.

Artificial intelligence is able to accurately perform super-complex operations. Roboticists have made great strides in this area. Perhaps soon it will be possible to reduce the risks caused by the human factor to zero.

Every year, methods of fighting cancer are becoming more effective and less harmful to the body. This is facilitated by a rapidly growing database of human biology at the molecular and genetic levels, the development of technologies, in particular artificial intelligence, as well as progress in the study of cancer cells themselves.

This rate of progress makes it possible to look to the future with hope, hoping that one day cancer can be cured easily and quickly.

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