Big Pharma And The Search
The imbalance between private and public funding of cancer research has led some critics to argue that Big Pharma is actually slowing the search for a cancer cure by focusing so much money on developing patentable, single-drug treatments rather than testing combination therapies or exploring the repurposing of existing cheaper generic drugs, like even aspirin .
Eugene Brown is a scientific adviser for Global Cures, a nonprofit organization that helps cancer patients find evidence-based therapies that are outside of the typical “standard of care.” Those include the use of supplements or generic medications that have shown promise in speeding recovering or alleviating side effects of chemo and radiation.
Global Cures also advocates for research that repurposes existing drugs and FDA-approved compounds not originally created for cancer treatment, an approach that’s often ignored by for-profit pharmaceutical companies and underfunded by government agencies.
Brown disagrees that Big Pharma is the biggest problem preventing us from finding cancer cures and says that expecting pharmaceutical companies to invest in drug repurposing is equivalent to forcing a square peg through a round hole.
“There should be more collaboration where government and public institutions and charitable organization see this as an important goal. And in fact, Big Pharma can be incorporated into the whole scheme,” he says.
While Genomic Analyses Have Provided A Good Molecular Description Of Cancer Researchers Still Dont Understand How And When Cells Start To Go Rogue
Before liquid biopsies, smart tattoos that light up in the presence of cancer cells, small ingestibles that monitor the gastrointestinal tract, and other early-detection tests that sample blood, urine, saliva, or the breath can ever become part of the annual physical, they will have to be honed to the point of 99.9 percent accuracy or higher, similar to the accuracy of the early-pregnancy urine tests available at any drugstore. That is, they must be both highly sensitive and highly specific. This high degree of accuracy prevents false negative or false positive results when the test is used in large numbers of people.
Such tests could also help doctors decide whom to monitor more closely for cancer. Advances in biomarker testing could help us better risk-stratify the population, says Jane Kim, professor of health decision science at the Harvard Chan School. The whole point of screening is to pull out the people who are at lowest risk and focus your attention on those at highest risk. Today, with cervical and even colorectal cancer, there is a prevention mechanism: You remove precancerous lesions before they develop into cancer. But with breast cancer, you need early detection, because there are no really strong prevention mechanisms. Risk-stratifying patients would help efficiently identify high-risk patients through prevention and early detection.
The Time Is Right Even If Its Not For A Cure
Even the mere mention of cancer in the State of the Union speech should make a difference according to presidential rhetoric scholar
What presidents say helps set the agenda for the public and for the media, said the professor of communications and director of graduate studies at Georgia State University. Then see how much money they really they put behind the idea, and you will see how much they really meant it.
Naming the vice president to head the effort demonstrates commitment, experts said. Biden who lost his son to cancer, has already been working with Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources theyve had in over a decade, the President said
We are making progress with a much more rapid rate than ever, especially compared to my early days in the field, Varmus said. We have a totally different understanding of basic science, and we are working closely together with clinicians in ways that were never possible 20 to 30 years ago.
Dr. Wally Curran, the executive director at the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory, thinks this presidential priority comes just in time.
We dont have a cure for high blood pressure or diabetes, but people live good lives for years if these disease are managed.
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A Moon Shot For Prevention
In 1969, the Citizens Committee for the Conquest of Cancer, inspired by the success that year of the Apollo 11 space mission and propelled by the indomitable philanthropist Mary Lasker, conceived of a moon shot for cancer. That December, the group ran a full-page ad in The Washington Post and The New York Times: Mr. Nixon: You can cure cancer. At the time, a cure was perceived to be imminent.
President Richard Nixons grandiloquent response in his 1971 State of the Union address: The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve this goal.
But the War on Cancer, as the moon shot was called, didnt reach its goal. Partly, that was because cure was an erroneous target. Cancer is not one disease, but more than 200. We talk about a cure for cancer, but no one would ever use the term cure for infectious diseasethey would talk about a cure for AIDS or TB or malaria, says the Harvard Chan Schools Giovannucci. You have to think about these diseases one by one. More fundamentally, the War on Cancer failed because it spent far too little on cancer prevention and cancer prevention research.
Madeline Drexler is editor of Harvard Public Health.
Will We Ever Cure Cancer
We asked three cancer experts – Nobel laureate Professor Harald zur Hausen, Professor Walter Ricciardi and Dr Elisabete Weiderpass for their thoughts on curing cancer. They all sit on the EUs Horizon Europe mission board for cancer and will help to define a concrete target for Europe in this area over the next decade.
Prof. Harald zur Hausen, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg
Evidence of infections linked to cancer provide hope of preventing up to half of all cancers
If we can ever cure cancer completely that is an open question which I cannot answer. We have a good chance of drastically reducing the incidence of cancers, but what we see at present is that the incidence, or occurrence, of cancer is increasing globally.
The mortality of cancer patients is slightly decreasing, but the increase in incidence is not compensated by the decrease in mortality. There are still a large number of cases coming up every year, and if we really want to do something against cancer in the future, we need to stop the increase.
We know there are a number of cancer risk factors that can be avoided. At this moment, we also know of about 20% of cancers where infections are involved. We can not only effectively immunise patients against these types of cancer, but virtually eradicate it, in particular Hepatitis B and Human Papillomavirus where we have vaccines that are presently available.
Prof. Walter Ricciardi, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
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From Science To Action
Just as crucial will be translating new scientific insights into public health practicea field known as implementation science. Public health impact is efficacy times reach, says Karen Emmons, professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard Chan School. We often develop interventions without thinking about the end users and what could get in the way of true impact, so shame on us as a field. As a scientific community, we think, rather arrogantly, Well, weve shown that colorectal cancer screening is importantwhy dont community health centers just make sure that everybody has colorectal cancer screening? Its clear that vaccines are importantwhy arent all kids getting HPV vaccine? But the real question is: How do you structure systems to make those goals possible?
Todays cancer prevention and detection efforts regularly fall short in their impact. Although HPV vaccination administered in preadolescence, before a teen becomes sexually active, theoretically prevents some 90 percent of cervical cancers, the U.S. vaccination rate among adolescents is low. In 2017, only 42 percent of girls and 31 percent of boys received the two recommended doses before their 13th birthday. Similarly, in 2015, only 50 percent of women ages 40 years and older reported having a mammogram within the previous year, and only 64 percent within the previous two years.
We Cannot Treat Our Way Out Of The Rising Cancer Caseload The Only Solution Is A Full
In the next few years, cancer will become the leading cause of death in the United States. Later in this century, it is likely to be the top cause of death worldwide. The shift marks a dramatic epidemiological transition: the first time in history that cancer will reign as humankinds number-one killer.
Its a good news/bad news story. Cancer is primarily a disease of aging, and the dubiously good news is that we are living long enough to experience its ravages. Cancers new ranking also reflects public healths impressive gains against infectious disease, which held the top spot until the last century, and against heart disease, the current number one.
The bad news is that cancer continues to bring pain and sorrow wherever it strikes. Siddhartha Mukherjee titled his magisterial biography of cancer The Emperor of All Maladies, quoting a 19th-century surgeon. He left out the second part of the surgeons epithet: the king of terrors. Modern targeted treatments and immunotherapy have in some cases led to wondrous cures, and many malignancies are now caught early enough so that their sufferers can live out full lives. But advances in treatment alone will never be enough to fully stem the burden of cancer.
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A New Approach To Treating The Cancer Epidemic
One promising new approach to treating cancer is adoptive cell therapy . It works by harnessing the cells of our immune system to eliminate cancer cells. Although proving effective for some cancers such as melanoma, at least temporarily, it doesnt work well for many other cancers.
Progress has been made recently though by Dr Giulia Casorati in Italy who received support from Worldwide Cancer Research to engineer a particular immune cell called invariant natural killer T cells, giving them the ability to directly kill cancer cells. The studies in mice found that the growth of tumours was slowed down using this innovative technology, and in some cases, the cancer was even cured. With further testing and clinical trials, the researchers hope that in the future, this will lead to innovative new treatments for patients.
In The Next Five To 10 Years The Cancer
Currently, those two streams of funding are wildly unequal. In fiscal year 2018, the last year for which data is available, only 5.7 percent of the National Cancer Institute budget was allotted to cancer prevention and control. Today, even the money for treatment research and other programs may be whittled back. The proposed fiscal year 2020 budget for the NCI is $5.2 billionnearly $900 million less than the enacted 2019 budget. At the CDC, the proposed budget for cancer prevention and control was trimmed by more than $34 milliona 9 percent cut from last year. Globally, cancer prevention research is allotted an estimated 2 to 9 percent of global cancer research funding.
The biggest unknown in cancer prevention is how to sustain proven, effective, and lifesaving preventive efforts over the long run, says Howard Koh, the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership at the Harvard Chan School and the Harvard Kennedy School former assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and former commissioner of public health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Prevention should be integral, not optional. But in government, prevention budgets are always the first items to be cut and the last to be restored.
Shoe-leather population research and high-tech bench science: Both will be needed to stop cancers unabated rise.
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Democrats Price Control Scheme Is A Surrender In The Fight Against Cancer
Although the Biden Administration has repeatedly asserted that reducing cancer deaths and working towards ending cancer is a priority, Democrats dangerous price-setting scheme waves the white flag in the fight against this devastating disease.
- Cancer assails nearly 40 percent of men and women at some point in their lifetime.
- In 2022 alone, there will be 1.9 million new cancer cases and over 609,000 cancer deaths in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society.
- In their latest socialist price-fixing scheme, Democrats halt crucial incentives for innovation and development of cures for cancer and limit current cancer patients access to low-cost medicines.
READ: Study: Democrats Price Controls Would Have Killed 104 Cures We Have Today
Democrats wave the white flag in the fight against curing cancer by halting development and innovation of new cancer drugs.
- Certain cancer drugs are estimated to cost nearly $4.5 billion to develop and can take over ten years to bring to market, yet price controls in Democrats bill eliminates and further delays incentives to innovate and develop new drugs.
- The Council of State Bio Associations warns that socialist drug price controls will get in the way of the fight against cancer: In oncology alone, the University of Chicago found that price controls would reduce overall annual cancer R& D spending by about $18.1 billion, or 31.8 percent.
Democrats proposal means cancer patients will pay more for fewer choices.
Legislation Only Stops Cancer Treatments Being Advertised To The Public
Predating the formation of the NHS by almost a decade, the Cancer Act 1939 originally specified how cancer treatments should be paid for, and how those treatments should be administered across the country.
One of the intentions of the Cancer Act 1939 was to prohibit certain advertisements relating to cancer. In the intervening decades the Act has changed substantially, but the rules on advertisingcontained in Section 4largely remain in place.
This isnt just limited to unproven or unconventional treatments. The ban on advertising extends to all treatments, including chemotherapy and radiation.
This doesnt prevent people from claiming that an alternative treatment has been used to cure cancer, it just means that they cant advertise that treatment. Cancer Research UK says Implicit in the term advertisement is that there is a financial incentive.
To give a practical example, if someone claimed that a specific type of diet plan cured cancer, they would be able to publish an article in a scientific journal explaining their proposed treatment under the Act. They would not, however, be allowed to advertise their diet plan directly to consumers.
Image courtesy of the National Cancer Institute.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about thisand find out how to report Facebook contenthere. For the purposes of that scheme, weve rated this claim as false because the Cancer Act 1939 doesnt ban the implementation or discussion of alternative cancer cures.
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The Zhu Family Center For Global Cancer Prevention
In February 2019, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health established the Zhu Family Center for Global Cancer Prevention, an innovative interdisciplinary center that will focus on education and research aimed at preventing people from getting cancer and improving early detection. Unlike most current cancer-prevention research, which takes place in siloed disciplines that seldom communicate or join forces, the Zhu Family Center will encourage partnerships among researchers exploring the basic causes of cancer, those who build technologies that can be used to detect cancer early, and those trained to implement those strategies in local communities.
The centers director is Timothy Rebbeck, the Vincent L. Gregory, Jr. Professor of Cancer Prevention at the Harvard Chan School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute , professor of medical oncology at DFCI, and associate director for equity and engagement at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. Rebbeck leads molecular epidemiology studies of cancer etiology, outcomes, health disparities, and global health. His work has led to insights into the genetic and environmental causes of breast, prostate, skin, endometrial, and ovarian cancers.
We hope to create a new niche in the cancer- prevention field, says Rebbeck, finding areas that are not wholly technology and not wholly public health, but the interface of these different realms. Thats where we think we can make an impact.
Cancer Clues Across Two Dimensions
Should anyone still doubt that many cancers are preventable, the inarguable proof is how the disease plays out over time and space. Cancer rates and types can starkly change within a country and starkly vary between countries. These variations are not genetica small minority of cancers are directly attributable to known, death-dealing DNA mutations. Rather, they reflect externaland, in principle, modifiablerisk factors.
For example, lung cancer eclipsed all other cancers during most of the 20th century in the United States because per capita cigarette consumption shot up from 54 cigarettes a year in 1900 to 4,345 cigarettes in 1963, then fell to 2,261 in 1998. The initial upward trend was powered by corporate profiteering. The downward slope was powered by the landmark 1964 U.S. Surgeon Generals report on smoking and health, which firmly linked smoking and lung cancer and led to public education, indoor smoking bans, and higher tobacco taxes. Another instance of a breathtaking prevention success within a country took place in the 1980s and 1990s in Taiwan, which saw an 80 percent decline in liver cancer rates in birth cohorts that received hepatitis B vaccination early in life. And Australia recently reported it is on course to completely eliminate cervical cancer in the coming decades through vaccinations.
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