I would say that this is a rather controversial statement to make but one of the world’s cancer biologists, Sloan-Kettering’s Joan Massague may have just suggested something close to that in a talk he gave at my alma mater.
Unfortunately I haven’t found an English source for this piece of news but those of you that can cope with Spanish can follow it here
Massague believes that the first half of this century, thanks to past and ongoing efforts in so many fronts of cancer research (chemotherapy, personalised medicine, genomics…I assume that he forgot to mention mathematical oncology?) will transform cancer into a disease with a prognosis not too different from that of cardiovascular diseases. He also mentioned cancer as a disease with at least 300 variants so I imagine that some of them will be easy to tackle while others will keep cancer researchers busy for quite a few more decades.
We heard about the end of cancer before, for example in this episode involving the New York Times, Judah Folkman and angiogenesis almost exactly 10 years ago.
I was just going to mention the angiogenesis kerfuffle. It happened just as I was looking for PhD studentships in cancer research and caused some consternation among my peers! The professors in our undergrad department made a point of repeatedly telling students in our year to keep on with the application process, and that there was plenty of work for us for the forseeable future.
The best case scenario that I can see is better and better treatments for cancer. I don’t think an actual cure is within easy reach, although I hope I’m wrong and I’m out of a job soon! And treatments can always be improved… cancer researchers will definitely be kept busy!
The end of cancer is like the end of the world – it gets predicted periodically. However if Massague is saying within the next half century that would seem an achievable goal, at least for many forms of cancer to be reduced to chronic conditions. We have come a long way since 1958 and things are accelerating. With enough mathematicians asking their crazy questions of biologists anything might be possible!
After reading this paper, I really began to think that the end of cancer was near. However, it was published two years ago.
Hi guys,
Nothing like a provocative (misleading?) title for a post!
I got another email from a friend this morning that also asked me if I really believed that the end of cancer is in sight. As Simon said, and as I think Massague implied, is not that much that within 50 years we will be able to take a pill and get rid of a cancer but that we will have gone as far as to have treatments that can make cancer less of a death sentence…at least for most of the variants.
Simon: with enough mathematicians (and computer scientists) asking crazy questions to cancer biologists we might get closer to the end of cancer as a life threatening disease…at the cost of the mental sanity of those cancer biologists :)
David, it is certainly an exciting time to be involved in cancer research. As to the comparison to cardiovascular diseases, many cancer patients already have a better prognosis than a patient with severe coronary artery disease. Or liver cirrhosis. It is just that cancer sems to have that grim image.