Give me a scientific reason why cancer hasn't been cured

It's hard to control mutations and anihiliate only those cells. Even harder prevent them, as mutations are a natural process.

But I would say that we're indeed getting fucked.

>>8692904
>Every year, billions of dollars are poured into research
Wrong-O, fgt pls

>>8692909
Why is there always some dildo spewing garbage? Please don't make me hold your hand and do the math too.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/budget/fact-book/data/research-funding

>>8692904
>I can't find any breakthroughs for any of these organizations

Not sure what you are looking for as a breakthrough for the organizations. But if you loom at the survival rates for different sorts of cancer, and compare them to historical data, you'll see that a fuckton of progress has been made.

>>8692904
They have the cure you atupid fuck

No point curing it though because money would be lost

Cancer is not a monolithic disease that can be cured with a monolithic treatment. There are countless numbers of different mutations at different locations in DNA that can cause cancer pathophysiology, each leading to different progressions, treatments, and prognoses. Think of "cancer" more as a descriptor of a category of diseases that are roughly similar. There are certainly sub categories that have more in common and hence can be targeted with more focused treatments. Breast, colon, liver, etc. You have cancers caused by an identifiable agent aka carcinogens that in general lead to cancers of very similar pathophysiology. Then you get cancers caused by real random mutations, radiation of all types, bacteria, viruses, fungi, walking your dog.

TL;DR: Cancer is huge clusterfuck of "fuck my DNA up senpai". There most likely won't ever be a single "cure" for cancer, until crazy nano-robots which would basically be artificial, programmable cells.

>>8693029
Great answer, thanks for contributing

>>8692904
>give me a scientific reason for a social issue

Cancer was cured years ago. People need to think that cancer hasn't been cured so they have something to fight for that isn't world hunger or overpopulation.

>>8692968
>>8693095
Proof? Source?

File: Screenshot_2017-02-21-19-26-06.png (392KB, 1440x2560px) Image search: [Google]

392KB, 1440x2560px

>>8693096

File: Screenshot_2017-02-21-19-27-55.png (535KB, 1440x2560px) Image search: [Google]

535KB, 1440x2560px

>>8693096
Neat what info you can get from looking up Australian cure for cancer.

>>8693029
Nice.

>>8692904
Cancer is one of the best things for grant chasers. It is ever changing and "costs" a shitload on the patient end. lol

>>8692904
does anyone else see a monkey holding its finger up in this picture

>>8693169
The thing sticking out on the bottom right side looks like a monkey reaching up for something. The dark shape just up to the left from that looks like a bear stepping out of smoke.

I'm a chemical engineer working in early stage drug design, mainly focused on cancer. I try to design peptides to selectively target certain proteins in cells in oncogenic pathways. I'll give my take on this.

Firstly, what >>8693029 said. Cancer as a pathology is just a complete clusterfuck.

Once you get through all that mess to figure out what is causing the cancer on a cellular level, you still have to figure out a way to target it with a drug.

Biological systems are messy as hell. Binding is all based on affinity, nothing is purely specific to one target and no binding event is permanent.

Lets look at an example.

Say you're looking at class of tumors that all show malfunctions in the Wnt pathway. You detect an overexpression of B-Catenin in the tumor. You know that if you can create a drug that binds to the active site of B-Catenin, you disable the functionality of the protein, cell death resumes, and the tumor kills itself.

So now you have to make a ligand for B-Catenin that binds at just the right site. Our knowledge of protein folding is too shitty to do this in a systematic way, so you approach it with a bunch of methods that boil down to a very fancy trial and error approach.

Now it's not enough to find a ligand for your target. You need to hit it at exactly the right site. You need it to bind with greater affinity than other things that bind to that site. And most crucially, you need it to not bind to anything else.

It's tremendously difficult, and that's just to get to the point where you can attack the target.

>>8693225
Now lets say you find a ligand that hits your target in just the right way. Now you have to do a whole bunch of trials in cells and mice to make sure it doesn't murder your test subject.

This may be complicated by additions to your ligand. Like your ligand might just be a step towards bringing a larger payload molecule to actually do your drug action, which changes all the kinetics and binding of your overall structure.

One such thing people will try to do is develop a ligand that targets a cell membrane protein, then attach that to a protein that initiates cell death with a pH dependent trigger so that it is only functional in the tumor region, which is more acidic than the rest of the body.

Anyway, you spend millions of dollars up to this point to get something that you finally have enough confidence in to start human trials.

Human trials are where many drugs fail. Only 5.1% of oncology drugs make it from phase I to approval for use, and you don't even start a phase I for a drug without a lot of promising labwork behind it.

Basically what it comes down to is it is so damn difficult to make a drug that can carry out the cellular action you want it to in a tumor without simultaneously doing all sorts of other terrible things to the patient.

You talk about all this research funding, but you have to realize that all goes in the trash if your drug fails at any point in the development process. You can sink literally billions into a drug to pull it from the bench to a phase III, and still have it fail. Then all that money is just gone.

>>8692904
>Give me a scientific reason why cancer hasn't been cured yet?

it's too profitable to treat.

>>8692904

Entropy.

>>8692904
There is several different "cures for cancer", depending on the one you have.

I had malignant neoplasm for my thyroid, simply had both removed and took a shot of I-31 which let me isolated for a few days.

No more cancer.

tl:dr biology is complicated and there is no definite cure for cancer because it can manifest in different parts of the body. There is a variety of treatments for cancer, which can remove it ("cure").

>>8692904
Cancer is cell division gone haywire, until you can live without cells cancer will never cease to exist.

>>8693247
>>8693225
MDfag here. Do you know of any cancer types that don't alter the cancer cell population's CD expression?

Do you have any idea how you'd go about pharmacologically treating such cells? I thought a bit about it but it doesn't seem doable with our current technology.

>>8693104
According to some doctors that I've read cancer is largely preventable by diet - few exceptions here and there - and that many types of food have anti-cancer properties (doesn't mean cure by the way)
But try people to change their diet... Only few people are willing the others just want to stuff themselves with whatever they find tasteful and get quick fixes if such a lifestyle goes wrong

>>8693104
>>8693100

people like this idiot is why this website is the worst thing that ever happened to humanity

>>8692904
>How severely are we getting fucked?
Most people are bent-over and spread-em screwed.
They want science to solve all their emotional and life issues so they don't have to earn it.

>>8694129
Source? I'm actually interested.