Author: Ziv Raviv, PhD
Word Cloud By Danielle Smolyar
Cancer is one of the top causes of death in the Western world and one of the emergence outcomes of modern society after the industrial era. In high-income countries more than two thirds of all people live beyond the age of 70 and many of them die of chronic diseases e.g., cardiovascular disease, chronic lung disease, cancers, diabetes or dementia. It would not be wrong to assume that cancer was always there, yet now in the modern era it is only much more manifested and very common. The reasons of cancer being a new epidemic lies within several concepts: (i) the overall increase in life expectancy of human population, especially in the Western world, which is a consequence of better hygienic conditions and health care systems, that dealt well with old times epidemics, altogether expose “modern epidemics” where cancer is one of them as stated. Indeed, many types of cancer are of elderly population; (ii) the excess exposure to environmental hazardous materials and factors (e.g., air pollution, tobacco products, sun irradiation, asbestos etc); and (iii) the life style that characterizes modern life i.e., the consistence being of man in the Western society under stress conditions. For nearly a half century there has been a worldwide war on cancer. Much capital has been spent while still millions of lives were lost from cancer. Yet with all this effort little has changed in this battle and the rate of cancer remained constant. Moreover, despite many drugs developed to treat cancer after it has already developed, there is still no change in the amount of people that will actually develop cancer. Thus our approach of fighting cancer should be changed.
Much research effort is spent over the genetic background of cancer. The genetic factor was always there probably and what has been changed is the environment, namely the interactions between the genetic grounds with socio-environmental causes are the factors that have been changed. Thus the new scientific approach in cancer research should consists a broad perspective that will integrate all risk factors, internal as well as external, in order that a great portion of cancer research effort would be directed toward the interaction between socio-environment causes and genetics. The best example should come from lung cancers. It is most prevalent that smoking tobacco products has an undoubtedly direct initiation effect on most of lung cancer types i.e., tobacco smoking is the very common cause among many lung cancer patients. Tobacco smoking became common in the last century and there is a direct and clear correlation between lung cancer incidence and smoking, supporting the notion that lung cancer is a modern disease that arose from modern life style behavior (smoking) and environmental factors (passive smoking). Indeed, not every smoker gets lung cancer and there are many types of lung cancers with various severities. This is the place where genetics play a role. Thus, understanding the relationship between genetic and socio-environmental risk factors could assist fighting lung cancer. Prevention of smoking is the most cost-effective means of fighting lung cancer; however, tobacco smoking is still widespread. Thus there are also psychological considerations that have to be taken in account when coming to deal with the issue of treating tobacco-dependent lung cancer.
Along the history of cancer research , the major efforts were taken in the rode of understanding the molecular mechanisms of tumorigenesis and its genetic background. From the single cell level molecular mechanism of deregulation of intracellular signaling and factors that control the cell fate, through the mechanisms of cancer metastasis, back to cancer stem cells and forward to tumors microenvironment and the relationships of cancer with the immune system. These efforts have tremendous importance on understanding the biology of cancer and had led, and further will, to the development of anti-cancer treatments. However, since cancer is a very complex disease, where multiple intracellular and systematical factors are orchestrated, the benefits of single agent therapy developed from the ever efforts of cancer research is very limited. Modern concept in anti-cancer therapy is the personalized medicine approach, where in an ideal condition a person would undergo a genetic test for his tumor to realize what are the genetic and molecular essences of his disease, and following that, to make a tailor-made anti-cancer regimen. With the modern tools of genetics and gene sequencing, it should be readily to perform such genetic (and epigenetic) screens. However, it is not certain that specific drug(s) aimed to deal with these genetic/molecular moieties would be available in the foreseeing time. In addition, in such screening the genetic signature of cancer is obtained after the tumor is already established.
Many socio-environmental causes for cancer are known, although this knowledge is not always estimated correctly to its full extent and implication on cancer therapy. Cancer research in its current platform is extremely expensive. Developing new drugs are highly costly, take many years to develop and are complicated to produce. Thus cancer prevention programs are extremely essential to be developed as a better general cancer therapy approach. It is not hard to envisage how the reducing of cancer incidences is very economical in terms of hospitalization days and costs of drugs that are being paid from governmental subsidies. It is by far much more chipper to invest finance and efforts on cancer prevention programs. Such agenda should include educative programs aimed for teenagers and the overall population, together with plans for good dietary and relaxed life style; increasing the population awareness of environmental hazardous that can causes cancer; raising taxes on cigarettes and enforcing anti-smokers rules and regulations; enforcement of industrial anti-pollution regulations; developing and supporting anti-cancer vaccinations research and development; encouraging people to carry out routine checks for early detection of cancer and of genetic background that should be conducted in prevention centers in hospitals and within the community.
An inseparable matter embedded well under the big umbrella called cancer prevention programs is the continuous search for cancer biomarkers. As early detection is crucial to positive cancer prognosis, the need of finding, developing, and establishing detection methods for the identification of cancer biomarkers is priceless. Developing such tools of early detection would be very helpful in preventing cancer or at least favoring the chances of complete cure. An ideal cancer biomarker should be detectable upon routine blood tests, yet that is not always possible. By early detection of the disease early signs, much capital could be saved on hospitalization days and expensive and inefficient treatment of advanced staged cancer patients.
Major resistance to such comprehensive cancer prevention programs could come up from the pharmaceutical companies and from cancer research scientists, as much of the research and developing and costs efforts would be lost. It is not suggested herein to abandon completely the ongoing contemporary cancer research efforts, yet it is a wishful thinking that there will be a shift in the research of cancer toward the integration of prevention and basic cancer research, a matter that should yield better treatments and reducing cancer incidences. Moreover, shifting into cancer prevention-directed research could bring also prosperity to the drug companies as new treatments such as vaccinations to cancer would be developed. It is hard to perceive in present times the world without the vaccination to papillomavirus (HPV) that prevents many incidences of cervical cancer. The companies developed and selling these vaccinations surly had made fortune out of it.
In summary, developing new comprehensive prevention programs would be beneficial hence to the patients, the society and governmental authorities, reducing the burden of cancer incidences and the terrible consequences of this awful disease on human society.
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Many thanks,Annette
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I actually consider this amazing blog , âSAME SCIENTIFIC IMPACT: Scientific Publishing –
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Many thanks,Annette
I actually consider this amazing blog , âSAME SCIENTIFIC IMPACT: Scientific Publishing –
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Many thanks,Annette
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Many thanks,Annette