Future Advances in Cancer Treatment That May Save Lives
Physical Health
It’s estimated that more than 600,000 people in the United States (US) will die of cancer in 2024. To help prevent some of these deaths, researchers around the world are working on new cancer treatments that can help save lives.
There isn’t a cure for cancer. However, over the past 30 years, cancer research has led to new cancer treatments that have dramatically decreased the risk of dying from cancer. Even though we have several effective cancer treatments, cancer is still a leading cause of death worldwide.
In this article, we’ll review some of the new cancer treatments that may help save lives in the future.
How Is Cancer Treated?
Before we learn about future cancer treatments, we should understand what cancer treatments are currently available. The goal of cancer treatment is to kill all the cancer cells while causing the least amount of damage to healthy cells.
Surgery to remove the tumor is a common treatment used for many types of cancer. This type of treatment works best for tumors that are located in just one part of your body. For some people, surgery will be their only form of cancer treatment. Other people may need other treatments before surgery (called neoadjuvant therapy) and/or after surgery (adjuvant therapy).
Neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy often have chemotherapy. Chemotherapy (also called chemo) involves using drugs to kill fast-growing cancer cells to treat cancer or cancer symptoms.
Radiation therapy (also known as radiotherapy) is a cancer treatment that uses radiation (high-energy particles or waves) to kill cancer cells.
Chemotherapy and radiation therapy can be effective treatments for many types of cancer. However, they can cause uncomfortable or dangerous side effects because they can also affect healthy, fast-growing cells in your body, along with cancer cells.
When cancer growth is fueled by hormones (such as prostate or breast cancer), hormone therapy can be a good treatment option. This type of therapy blocks the effect of certain hormones or interferes with how they work in your body to stop cancer growth.
Targeted therapy is a newer type of cancer treatment that uses drugs that are directed at specific protein targets that help cancer cells grow and live longer. Targeted drugs treat cancer by killing or slowing the growth of breast cancer cells.
Immunotherapy is another type of cancer treatment that uses your own immune system to help fight cancer. We’ll discuss immunotherapy in more detail later in this article.
Some people will only have one type of cancer treatment, such as surgery. Most people will receive a combination of different treatments. The type of cancer treatment you receive depends on the type of cancer you have, where your cancer is located, and other factors related to your overall health.
Now that we’ve reviewed some of the most common types of cancer treatments, let’s learn more about what’s coming in the future.
Immunotherapy Advances in Cancer Treatment
Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses parts of your own immune system or substances made in a laboratory to enhance your immune response to better find and destroy cancer cells.
Your immune system is normally your first line of defense against cancer. Immune cells can get rid of foreign substances that shouldn’t be there (such as germs) and cells growing out of control. When cancer cells develop defenses to escape your immune system, cancer can grow and spread. Immunotherapy treatments give your immune system a boost to overcome these defenses.
Immunotherapy is currently a fast-growing area of cancer research. However, immunotherapy isn’t new. Immunotherapy was first used to treat cancer way back in 1891 when a physician used toxins from a bacterial infection to stimulate a patient’s immune system to fight cancer.
As immunotherapy research has evolved over the years, scientists have found more effective ways of using a patient’s own immune system to fight cancer. There are currently several immunotherapy treatments available to treat different many of the most common types of cancer, including breast cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and prostate cancer.
New types of immunotherapy are emerging to help in the battle against cancer. Below, we’ll discuss a few emerging immunotherapies for cancer.
CAR T-Cell Therapy
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy where your own immune system cells (T cells) are changed in a laboratory to attack cancer cells. In addition to being a type of immunotherapy, you may hear CAR T-cell therapy referred to as cell-based gene therapy, because it involves changing the genes of the T cell to improve their ability to find and attack cancer cells.
During this therapy, your healthcare provider will collect T cells from your blood in a process called leukapheresis. In the laboratory, a gene to help these T cells recognize cancer cells, called CAR, is added to your T cells. The CAR gene helps T cells recognize cancer cells. Once the gene is added, the T cells are given time to grow and multiply. Once enough CAR T cells have grown in the laboratory, they are given back to you. The newly made CAR T cells can seek and destroy cancer cells.
The United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved several CAR T-cell therapies for some types of blood cancers. Usually, CAR T-cell therapy is a treatment option for people when other treatments haven’t worked.
In the future, you may see CAR T-cell therapy used for other types of cancer or as a treatment option before other types of treatments. There are currently several ongoing clinical trials to test CAR T-cell therapy for other types of cancer.
Cancer Vaccines
You may think of vaccines only as a way to prevent infectious diseases, such as influenza (the flu). However, vaccines can also be used as a type of immunotherapy to help prevent and fight cancer.
There are two types of cancer vaccines — those that help prevent cancer and those that help treat cancer.
Vaccines to Prevent Cancer
Vaccines to prevent cancer fight viral infections that are linked to certain cancers. These vaccines help your immune system recognize and destroy viruses that can cause cancer. Vaccines work by training your immune system to recognize a virus by introducing weakened or inactive parts of a virus to your body.
Two viruses known to cause cancer in humans are human papillomavirus (HPV) and hepatitis B. HPV infection has been linked to several different cancers, including cervical, anal, throat, vaginal, and penile cancers. It’s estimated that the HPV vaccine prevents more than 30,000 cases of cancer each year in the US.
People with hepatitis B have an increased risk of developing liver cancer. Getting a hepatitis B vaccine can help prevent liver cancer caused by this virus.
Several other viruses are also linked to cancer, such as:
- Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)
- Hepatitis C virus
- Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
- Human herpesvirus-8 (HHV-8)
- Human T-lymphotropic virus-1 (HTLV-1)
- Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCV or MCPyV)
Currently, vaccines are only available for HPV and hepatitis B. Vaccines that prevent infection with the above viruses may save lives by preventing virus-associated cancers.
Vaccines to Treat Cancer
Vaccines to treat cancer are used in people who have cancer to train the immune system to attack cancer cells.
In principle, cancer treatment vaccines work similarly to virus vaccines by training your immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells. In some types of cancer treatment vaccines, your own immune cells are removed and exposed to whole or parts of cancer cells in a laboratory. The trained immune cells are then injected back into your body to fight cancer cells.
Currently, there are two FDA-approved cancer treatment vaccines — one for prostate cancer and one for melanoma. Other cancer treatment vaccines are being tested for safety and efficacy and may be available in the future.
Radiation Therapy Advances
Radiation therapy isn’t a new type of cancer treatment. In fact, radiation has been used to treat cancer for more than 100 years. Recent advances in radiation therapy have focused on reducing the side effects associated with this type of treatment.
While radiation therapy is carefully aimed at cancer cells, it can also affect the healthy tissue that surrounds the cancer, causing side effects such as:
- Fatigue (extreme tiredness)
- Increased risk of secondary cancers
- Fertility problems
- Diarrhea
- Hair loss
- Skin changes
- Bladder problems
Advances in radiation therapy aim to decrease the side effects of this type of cancer treatment by more precisely targeting cancer cells. Two examples of new types of radiation therapy include proton therapy and alpha-emitter radiation therapy.
Proton Therapy
Proton therapy involves using positively charged particles called protons instead of X-rays. Because protons can more precisely target tumors, this type of radiation therapy causes less radiation outside of the tumor. This is why proton therapy generally has fewer side effects compared to traditional radiation therapy, as it causes less damage to surrounding tissue.
Alpha-Emitter Radiation Therapy
Alpha-emitter radiation therapy uses a radioactive substance injected into your vein to kill cancer cells. The radioactive substance gathers in areas of the body with cancer and gives off a type of high-energy radiation called alpha particles that kill cancer cells. Currently, alpha-emitter radiation therapy is used to treat prostate cancer that’s spread to the bone. In the future, this type of radiation therapy may be used to treat other types of cancer.
Precision Medicine
Precision medicine is a treatment approach where healthcare providers develop a specific care plan for an individual based on the genes, proteins, and other substances in their body. You may hear precision medicine referred to as personalized medicine or personalized care.
Precision medicine is based on understanding how certain genetic changes (mutations) affect how cancer develops and behaves. With this information, healthcare providers can test you for specific genetic changes that may impact your cancer care.
Healthcare providers can use precision medicine in cancer care to help with the following:
- Identifying people with a high risk of certain cancers
- Diagnosing cancer at an early stage
- Correctly diagnosing specific cancers
- Choosing the best cancer treatment options
- Evaluating how your cancer treatment is working
Personalized medicine isn’t currently used for every type of cancer. As researchers learn more about gene changes and cancer, the role of personalized medicine will continue to expand.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a machine-based system that can make predictions, recommendations, or decisions based on a set of objectives defined by a human. Researchers are studying how AI can impact cancer treatment.
AI and Cancer Diagnosis
One way that AI may be used in cancer treatment is to help diagnose cancer. Researchers can train an AI-powered algorithm to recognize patterns that could indicate cancer. For example, skin cancer can be difficult to diagnose. Most cases of skin cancer are initially detected by a healthcare provider looking at the skin. AI may be able to spot skin changes characteristic of skin cancer, allowing providers to make a more accurate diagnosis.
Some studies have found that AI algorithms may be better than humans at detecting cancer. A 2020 study found that an AI-powered algorithm was able to detect early breast cancer from a mammogram better than radiologists (doctors with special training to diagnose medical conditions using imaging tests).
AI and Cancer Treatment
Healthcare providers may be able to use AI to predict how well patients will react to certain cancer treatments. Researchers can program AI algorithms to suggest the best treatment plan based on unique molecular, genetic, and tumor-based features. A 2018 study found that an AI algorithm was able to predict a person’s response to chemotherapy with more than 80% accuracy.
If AI can help healthcare providers choose the most effective cancer treatment plans, it may be able to save lives.
Get Involved
If you or someone you love has cancer, you can be part of the process of discovering new cancer treatments by participating in a clinical trial. Clinical trials are research studies that tell researchers whether a new treatment is safe and effective. Talk to your healthcare team to find out if you qualify for a clinical trial.
