There are (I believe) other causes for cervical cancer, including causes as-yet unknown.

So, while the vaccine reduces the chance of cervical cancer, it isn't a vaccine for cervical cancer - not even indirectly.

But we're playing with words; I think we all understand what's going on here :-)

How about the nanotechnology?



I also hope good luck to the scientist. I wish they will have several breakthroughs in the near future.

Hi Henri,

I think that your question is one that a lot of people would like the answer to, especially if they or their loved ones have been affected by cancer. The bad news is that a cure for all types of cancers is not expected for a long time. The good news is that by contributing to this project we can help to bring that day nearer.

Why is a cure for all types of cancer not expected for a long time? Here are some of the problems:
* There are many different types of cancers. It is not just one disease and some types are more difficult to cure than others. Even cancers that occur in one organ of the body can often be broken down again into various subtypes, each of which may need very different treatments. Cancer diagnosed after it has spread to organs is generally much less curable than cancer diagnosed at earlier stages.
* Cancers often include a large number of mutations, some of which can help to create multidrug resistance. So even if a cancer is treated with the best treatment for its subtype, it might have mutations that prevent response.
* The difficulty of developing drugs that target cancers is compounded by the mechanisms cancer cells have developed to hid from the immune system.
* Most cancer drugs target cells that have the characteristics of cancer cells, such as rapid division, but it is now believed that cancerous stem cells play a role in some cancers. These cancerous stem cells produce cancerous normal cells, but they don't necessarily have the characteristics of a cancer cell, such as rapid division. It's a bit like fighting organised crime and just being able to take out the low-level street level drug dealers, who are easy to find, but never getting the boss who is recruiting them into a life of crime.
* It takes a long time to develop drugs. For example, with the drug herceptin, which targets a particular protein, the protein was discovered in the late 1970s, but the drug that targets that protein only made it to clinical trials in the mid-1990s and only started to come into use for the treatment of breast cancer at a curable stage in the mid-2000s. So, it was about 25 years from the lab discovery until it potentially cured cancer in a sizable number of patients. Overall the time lapse may be more like 15 years, but that is still slow.
* The drugs must be able to kill off the cancerous cells without creating too much damage to normal cells. This is very tricky because cancer cells are normal cells gone bad and often use some of the same sources of energy that normal cells use, but just make much greater use of them.

I thought your question was a good one because often people say things like "If we can put a man on the moon, why haven't we cured cancer yet?" Personally, I blame Nixon for raising expectations, since when he launched his 'War on Cancer' he made it sound like it would be as easy as getting someone on the moon, but some scientists said that it was a bad example: the space programme was about the application of existing knowledge, whereas in the fight against cancer the scientific knowledge has had to be created step by step.

So, the payoffs from this project will probably be a ways out, but the sooner we start the sooner we will get there.