Three Areas of Cancer Research That Medical Experts are Excited About

A summary of innovative tools being utilized to combat different cancers.

A complex collection of diseases, cancer does not readily give up its vulnerabilities and constantly delivers new challenges that scientists and clinicians must face; as such, they must also continuously hone the way they diagnose and treat it.

While the advent of modern medicine means that diagnosis rates for many cancers – as well as survival rates – have increased, there was still an estimated 19.3 million new cases detected globally in 2020, which means that there is still an uphill battle against this malady.

In this article, we take a quick look at three innovative tools being developed by medical experts to understand and combat cancer.

Bacteria and magnetism

Targeting systematically delivered therapeutics for cancer is difficult, so there is now a growing interest in the medical field to exploit biological agents to enhance tumour accumulation. For a century, scientists have recognized that certain bacteria can colonize tumours and trigger regression, and thanks to the modern genetic engineering methods available today, experts can utilize attenuated bacteria that can have a therapeutic effect exactly where a cancer patient’s body needs it. These therapeutic effects include “secretion of toxins, competition for nutrients, and modulation of immune responses.”

Although bacterial cancer therapy has plenty of promises, it still poses some challenges; this includes delivering doses to the correct location and inserting them into the tumour. To address these issues, methods such as using magnetically responsive bacteria to create a directable “living ferrofluid” are being explored.

Personalized medicine

A tool that is transforming the medical scene and helping healthcare providers create personalized care plans for each patient, personalized medicine is an approach for disease prevention and treatment that takes into account biological, genetic, behavioural, environmental, and social risk factors that are unique to each person. It is rooted in early detection and prevention, and integrates data from genomics and other advanced technologies, digital health monitoring, and integrating the latest medical advancements for optimized results.

One key example is oncology, where genetic testing for tumour mutations and predispositions are increasingly being used and are showing more value in the intelligent use of targeted drugs to improve outcomes.

There are number of personalized cancer approaches already in use, including EGFR, HER2 and NTRK inhibitors, as well as the CAR-T cells. All in all, there is a lot to look forward to in the personalized medicine space, with significant progress being recorded over the past 5 years alone.

Chronotherapy: Counting down cancer

Connected to the tool of personalized medicine is another innovation known as chronotherapy. In 2017, a Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology went to three circadian biologists, who uncovered the molecular mechanism of circadian biological clocks, an achievement that shows cancer chronotherapy is gaining critical momentum in entering mainstream oncology.

Summarily, the many key physiological processes in the cells of the human body are changed daily by the circadian clock. These cellular clocks are disrupted in some tumours, but not in others. Functional clocks in tumours predict the survival time of patients, as such, if experts can determine the clock status in solid tumours, it would be easy to determine whether a patient is high or low risk, and can even help guide therapy and develop a new class of clock-targeting treatments.

In conclusion: The search is still on

These are just three of the methods scientists are discovering as veritable ways to battle cancer and all of its complexities. At present, these innovative tools (alongside many others) give fuel to the aim of cancer specialists, that is to detect cancer early, treat it safely, and even possibly send it into remission.

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