Public focus on ‘cure for cancer’ is masking progress

A YouGov poll has revealed that a strong public focus on a ‘cure for cancer’ is masking dramatic progress in extending the lives of patients with advanced cancer and turning it into a manageable disease long term.

According to the research, only 28 per cent of people consider cancer a disease which can be controlled long term, compared with 46 per cent for heart disease and 77 per cent for diabetes – even though the average person with cancer now lives more than 10 years. Just a quarter of people believe long-term survival rates from cancer are increasing ‘a lot’, and just 39 per cent feel that cancer could be ‘cured’ in the next 50 years.

The Institute of Cancer Research stresses that exclusively focusing on curing cancer runs the risk of overlooking the huge progress that has been made in allowing people with advanced disease to live much longer with a high quality of life.

The ICR, which commissioned polls of 2,103 members of the public and 355 people who have been treated for cancer to inform the development of its new Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery, argues that while curing cancer will always be the ultimate goal for patients and researchers, new ‘Darwinian’ approaches to treatment now offer the hope of controlling even advanced disease in the long term.

The charity and research institute is launching the world’s first ‘Darwinian’ drug discovery programme within the new centre aimed at achieving further dramatic improvements in the proportion of patients whose disease can be controlled long term and effectively cured.

Only 60 per cent of people in the YouGov poll understood that the term ‘drug resistance’ in cancer means the cancer treatment has stopped working – with many assuming the term related to antibiotic treatment. Some 15 per cent of the public, and 16 per cent of cancer patients, were not aware that cancer can resist treatment and come back – a tragic reality for many people with cancer.

Olivia Rossanese, who will be head of Biology in the new Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery, said: “Curing cancer will always be the Holy Grail of researchers and patients, but focusing exclusively on this risks masking the dramatic progress we are making against the disease, where even patients with advanced cancer are increasingly experiencing disease control in the long term with a good quality of life.

“By focusing overwhelmingly on cure, treatment has tended to be as aggressive as possible but in some patients there is a risk that that could drive cancer evolution, and the return of the disease in a more dangerous and less treatable form. We believe cancer should no longer be a case of ‘cure or nothing’. We know there’s a growing population of people who are living longer and better with cancer and that is something to celebrate.

“At the ICR, our aim is to discover many more anti-evolution treatments to overcome drug resistance, so we can not only cure a greater proportion of patients but also give others with advanced disease the chance of a much longer and better life.”