How far research has come

Paris – Could humanity finally be gaining the upper hand in our age-old fight against cancer?

Recent scientific and medical advances have added several new weapons to our arsenal, including personalised gene therapy, artificial intelligence screening, simple blood tests and, potentially, vaccines.

Cancer accounted for nearly 10 million deaths – almost one in six of the global total – in 2020, according to the World Health Organisation.

There have been promising recent developments in diagnosing and treating the disease.

Immunotherapy

Drugs which stimulate the immune system to track down and kill cancerous cells have been one the biggest advances in cancer treatment over the last decade. They have fewer severe side-effects than chemotherapy.

Before 2010, the survival rate for people with severe cases of the skin cancer melanoma was low. But thanks to immunotherapy drugs, some patients can now live for 10 years or more.

However, not all tumours respond to immunotherapy.

Pierre Saintigny, an oncologist at France’s Leon Berard cancer centre, said: “We have moved up a level in cancer treatment, but steps still need to be taken for patients who do not benefit from it.”

CAR-T therapy

The T-cells are taken from the blood of a patient and modified in a laboratory. Then the T-cells, which are part of the immune system, are injected back into the patient, newly trained to target cancerous cells.

Another technique called Allogeneic CAR-T involves getting the cells from a different, healthy person. CAR-T therapies have mainly been effective against some kinds of leukaemia and the process remains expensive.

Artificial intelligence

Computer programmes using artificial intelligence (AI) can identify brain and breast cancer from routine scans with more accuracy than humans.

AI is expected to play an increasing role in other ways.

“Thanks to AI, we will be able to identify which patients can benefit from shorter treatment,” said Fabrice Andre, an oncologist France’s Gustave Roussy cancer institute, adding this would mean fewer side-effects and a lower burden on the health system.

Liquid biopsy testing

Liquid biopsies are able to detect cancer in DNA from a simple blood test, which is easier and less invasive than traditional biopsies which require a tissue simple.

“But there are still a lot of false positives,” Andre said.

Vaccines

There have long been vaccines available to protect against the human papillomavirus and now hopes have risen that the mRNA technology pioneered for Covid vaccines could also lead to a breakthrough in cancer. –