Question: what is it about cancer cells that makes it hard to find a cure?

Alex Pool answered on 18 Nov 2014:

Great question Kate!

So there are a number of reasons that cancer is so hard to treat. The first is that cancer is where one of your own cells has gone wrong and just keeps dividing, making new cells when it shouldn’t – which is why you get a tumour. Most diseases are caused by an infection so something going into the body like a bacteria or virus that we can then target. Most of the current drugs used try and stop those cancer cells dividing, but they also then also affect normal cells which need to divide too – which is why people get such horrible side effects.

Another reason is that every cancer is different, because it has to start in every human the bits of your DNA that mutate will vary from patient to patient. So two people with lung cancer will still have very different cancers – one patient might respond to a drug, whilst with the other patient the drug may have no effect.

Then a third reason is that a lot of cancers can adapt and become resistant to drugs, so whilst the drug may work to begin with the cancer can then become immune to the drug.

Hope that answers it 🙂