New strategies

Beyond currently available treatments, researchers are searching for new and more efficient strategies to treat cancer that combine higher survival rates and fewer side effects.

Several encouraging avenues of research have been identified, and there are various drugs already at clinical trial stage.

Two very promising approaches are those targeting genes, namely gene therapy , or proteins as in cancer proteomics .

But probably the most exciting avenue at the moment, especially because of the effectiveness of the new drugs being released targeting cancers classified otherwise as "hopeless" is immunotherapy .

In immunotherapy the goal is to “manipulate” the immune system - the network of cells and organs that protect us against disease - to improve the patient’s ability to fight cancer. One such example are “cancer vaccines” that aim to get the patient's immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells.

There are also studies looking into ways of blocking cancer cells’ ability to repair their own DNA errors, increasing the cells instability and ultimately causing their death.

In fact, as cancer cells multiply very fast, they have a higher chance of producing DNA errors. If these are not repaired and allowed to accumulate, even these “immortal” cancer cells will die. This type of therapy appears to be particularly effective on breast cancers linked with BRCA mutations , or triple negative ones