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Asked by m9 to Ceri, Marikka, Matt, Rob, Sally on 17 Nov 2014.
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Ceri Dare answered on 17 Nov 2014:
Yes – there are lots and lots of medicines which slow down cancer – see here: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerandresearch/all-about-cancer/what-is-cancer/treating-cancer/treatingcancer
Some viruses can put you at higher risk of cancer – the best known is probably the HPV virus causing cervical cancer, and there is an immunisation which can prevent that: http://www.hpvvaccine.org.au/
Experimentally, immunisations have been tested to treat cancer people already have, by helping the immune system recognise cancer as bad and destroy it: http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/treatmenttypes/immunotherapy/immunotherapy-cancer-vaccines
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Robert Hampson answered on 17 Nov 2014:
Vaccines cannot be developed directly against cancer. Cancer is essentially your own cells dividing and reproducing wildly out of control. If you try and produce a vaccine, then either your immune system won’t respond to it as it will see the vaccine as part of yourself, or it will respond to it and start mistaking many of your own cells for germs and cause auto immune diseases (where your immune system attacks your own body).
However, many cancers can be caused by viruses, in fact, only tobacco causes more cancers. Liver cancer, cervical cancer, sarcoma are just a few of the types which can be caused by viruses. Viruses can be vaccinated against and young girls are already vaccinated against several strains of the Human Papilloma Virus to prevent cervical cancer leter in life.
There are plenty of drugs which slow cancer down. Chemotherapy is essentially a bunch of drugs which target quickly dividing cells and kill them. This obviously kills the quickly dividing cancer cells. However, it is a somewhat crude strategy as it also kills your own quickly dividing cells (like those in your hair follicles for example which is why chemo causes hair loss). Basically, we hope that chemotherapy kills the cancer before it kills the patient. New forms of chemotherapy have better targeting and are more fancy so they target the cancer better. Some are activated by the lack of oxygen in the tumour, some are formulated with special drug delivery strategies so the drug is only released near the cancer, etc.
Radiotherapy is also used to kill cancer. This essentially irradiates the tumour until it dies. You couldn’t really describe it as a drug but it is a treatment used to slow down and reverse cancer.
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