Cancer is considered to be one of the main diseases in the world. In addition to being known to affect a lot of people around the world, cancer is also ranked as the second most common cause of death. While it’s been a seemingly incurable disease for a long time, various medical researches paved way for more innovative methods to treat cancer.
There have been several groundbreaking discoveries about cancer following numerous medical studies conducted in the past decades, which include systematic cancer detection, prevention, and treatment. Such discoveries proved to be beneficial for countless healthcare service providers around the world, especially those in developing countries. With the help of medical researchers, and private sectors, who donate to cancer research projects and are working tirelessly to discover efficient cancer treatments through the decades, cancer isn’t as terrifying as it seems.
Besides that, below are the top three most important insights from cancer research in the past decade.
  1. Advances In Cancer Immunotherapy
One of the most noteworthy advances in cancer therapy include immunotherapy. Apart from being known to be one of the earliest attempts in bolstering non-surgical cancer treatments, this particular discovery took not just decades to be effective, but over a hundred years in the trial. Known to be a remarkable medical approach for fighting cancer, immunotherapy’s main objective is to prime the body’s immune system to effectively fight off cancer cells. Not only that, but this particular form of therapy also boosts the immune system’s capacity to combat cancer cells as much as it does to other harmful invaders, like bacteria.
If that alternative doesn’t work, then all immunotherapy could do is delay the rapid spread of cancer cells and decelerate it from proliferating to other body cells. Moreover, one of the most notable characteristics of immunotherapy includes its high efficacy rates in treating advanced melanoma. Aside from various available drugs in the market to treat melanoma, immunotherapy proved to be successful in treating it.
With the continuous support in developing and enhancing immunotherapy treatments, there’ll be a time this can successfully treat other chronic diseases, including bladder, kidney, heart, lung, lymphoma, and other types of cancer.
  2. Breakthrough In Molecular Diagnostics
While identifying causes of mutation in cancer cells has been one of the most challenging parts of cancer detection aside from treating it, various medical researchers were able to formulate efficient methods and tests to effectively pinpoint them. Particularly, another exceptional insight in cancer research involves breakthroughs in molecular diagnostics. This particular discovery allows doctors and medical experts to closely monitor the number of cells in the body.
In addition, molecular diagnostics may also include structural rearrangements, chromosomal losses and gains, adjustments in gene copy numbers, and broader mutational signatures. Several medical facilities developed certain molecular diagnostic tests, which can be utilized to analyze tumors from thousands of cancer patients and allows doctors to assess them using blood tests from a liquid biopsy.
Additionally, several diagnostic tests that use normal tissue cells are now gaining attention in the medical field due to their ability to unravel details about clonal hematopoiesis (CH). This particular age-related health condition results in an excessive increase in the number of white blood cells that lead to cancer-inducing mutations.
  3. Innovations In Radiation Therapy
Another notable insight in cancer research includes innovations in radiation therapy. One of the most popular principles in administering this form of therapy is about advancing efficacy and potency in every cancer treatment. Medical discoveries that include image-guided radiation therapy and intensity-modulated radiation therapy are known to be some of the most popular products of technology and medical expertise. While this type of radiation therapy is relatively new to the medical field, they’re gradually rising in popularity through the decades.
Aside from that, such type of radiation therapy utilizes advanced imaging and computer programs to effectively produce high doses of radiation without affecting other healthy tissues. When it comes to acquiring more favorable outcomes, many researchers suggest patients to undergo fewer series of radiation therapy produces similar outcomes. Additionally, there are also successful researches which effectively determine not only the type of tumors that can be treated with lesser radiation but also methods that can lessen risks of side effects.
Moreover, there are specific clinics, which conduct clinical trials to provide a coherent difference between proton therapy and radiation therapy. Such clinics also aim to provide an efficacious type of radiation therapy that can treat chronic diseases and illnesses, including cancer. There are also medical facilities that utilize radioimmunotherapy treatments, which are a combination of radiation therapy and immunotherapy.
Bottom Line
Treating cancer has never been an easy task for both medical experts and healthcare professionals. Aside from being a prominent risk to human health, this particular illness has also been considered as one of the world’s leading illnesses that affect millions of people. Fortunately, with the ceaseless efforts coming from medical researchers and healthcare experts, there are now a wide variety of methods and treatments that can be utilized to detect, prevent and treat cancer cases.
Aside from that, various remarkable insights in cancer research proved to effectively treat cancer, such as immunotherapy, radiation therapy, and advanced molecular diagnostics. Through these noteworthy medical discoveries, cancer can now be treated accordingly and efficiently.
