Question: How close are we to a certain cure for cancer instead of just using chemotherapy?

Gabrielle Harker answered on 21 Nov 2022:

There are three standard types of intervention that we can use to help treat multiple different types of cancer. These include first surgery to remove the tumour (this is only really possible if the cancer has not spread), chemotherapy and radiotherapy. However, there are many different types of cancer e.g., breast, liver, lung, so we need to develop medicine that is tailored to the specific cancer type. This is called targeted therapy. For example, HER2+ breast cancer is a specific type of breast cancer, where a protein (HER2) is found at high levels on the cancer cells surface and helps the cancer to grow and survive. Using this information, it was possible to develop medicines to target HER2 and kill the cancer cells, helping to treat this specific type of cancer.

So overall, there are lots of different types of cancer which will need lots of different types of medicine to treat them!