Why is cancer difficult to treat?

 Interesting Facts about Cancer:

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Globally around one in six deaths are caused by cancer. During 2018 along cancer killed nine point six million people worldwide.

Although Cancer has been researched since the 18th century. We still don't have a universal treatment for this deadly disease.

So why is cancer so difficult to treat?

Treating cancer isn't easy because it ultimately involves fighting your own body. Under the influence of the environment, genetics and healthy lifestyle some cells break out of control. They grow and multiply quickly while carrying genetic mutations that allow them to divide and controllably. Eventually they become tumors and start invading different tissues and organs.

Cancer cells turn into hidden enemies within us. Newly-formed cancer cells create an entire micro environment around themselves. They trick healthy cells into forming blood vessels in this new environment. These vessels are then used to feed cancer cells and help them grow.

This process of blood vessel formation is called angiogenesis.

The new blood vessel support cancer cells by providing them with oxygen and nutrients.

• Escape Immune System:

Another dangerous property of cancer cells is their ability to escape the immune system.

They do so by targeting T cells that are tasked with killing infected and cancerous cells. Cancer cells Target T cells and deactivate them. This allows them to become hidden from the immune response on the other hand cancer cells can mimic healthy cells and state and recognized by the immune system.

This means that research needs to find new ways to target cancer cells without affecting healthy ones since both become strikingly similar.

• Drug Resistance:

Another challenge comes from cancer cells developing drug resistance over time. Cancer cells adopt to drugs and learn to block their activity or eject them out of the cell.

Most of the drugs need to undergo some changes within the cell to be activated. These drugs utilize chemical Pathways that happen inside the cell.

However cancer cells can shut down these Pathways. Even worse, they can evolve to change their molecular properties which these drugs target. As a result Cancer Treatments need to constantly evolve, finding new target and evading the tumors protective mechanisms.

• Different Forms of cancer:

Another reason why dealing with cancer is hot is because tumors come in so many different types. Sometimes cancer cells within the same tumor are also different from each other.

There are four stages of cancer progression.

Stage 4 is the most aggressive where tumors become incredibly hard to treat. This stage cancer cells migrate from the original site to other parts of the body. This process is called metastasis.

Because cancer cells are good at hiding from the immune system. They changed their cellular structure and escape through the lymphatic system.

Eventually, they colonize new tissues within the body. Once cancer cells have traveled, it becomes hard to predict. Where will they end up? This makes an early diagnosis of cancer a difficult task.

When cancer cells spread to new parts of the body, they form new tumors that have different properties from the site where they originated. The original tumors and the secondary tumors can be very different from each other, even on a genetic level

These massive variations between different types of tumors make it difficult to create a universal cancer drug. Instead each type of cancer requires different treatment approaches.

This is why diagnosing cancer early and preventing its movement can substantially improve the treatment. These factors make cancer a complicated melody to treat the disease. Nevertheless cancer research is constantly developing.

It is finding new ways to distinguish between healthy and cancerous cells and target them selectively while also avoiding devastating side effects.

Scientists are also training our immune cells to seek out and destroy tumors with more efficiency. Not to mention newly developed diagnostic tests that allow detecting multiple types of cancer up to four years in advance.

All these new Innovations will eventually help us improve our chances of survival from cancer.

Conclusion:

Despite its convoluted nature, cancer will eventually be defeated. It is just a matter of time knowledge and technological innovation.