Cancer as Chronic Disease?

Great and hopeful article from Oncology Times last week. The title alone is awesome: "White Paper Prediction: With Sustained Efforts, Cancer Can Become Chronic, Manageable Disease in 10 Years."

The piece discusses a research paper that featured interviews with 30 cancer researchers. The conclusion: even though funding for research is not where it needs to be, we are making advances quickly enough that, if we keep up the pace, we can make cancer a chronic disease -- something that can be controlled.

There's a school of thought that says we may never cure most cancers; the best we can do is control them. We could think of them as chronic diseases, like diabetes. That's "the best" we can do, and that's not so bad. We have enough treatments now that hold things in check without curing them. Rituxan maintenance is a good example -- it won't make it go away forever, but it won't get any worse.

The trends in treatment that might make this happen will be:

• Greater use of molecular biomarkers in the clinic.
• Use of molecularly targeted therapies in combination to form “personalized treatment cocktails” based on each patient’s genetic makeup and cancer biology.
• Evidence-based physician/patient decision making.
• Development of regulatory and reimbursement policies to advance and enhance targeted therapies.

All of them are already being used now. As this report says, a little bit more of a push and maybe we can...well, if not beat it, at least fight it to a draw.

I love articles like this. They give us hope. I've been reading enough about cancer research for the last few years to know that 10 years might be a little on the sunny side, but not completely unreasonable. Good enough for some realistic optimism, anyway.